Across the Sky in Stars
by northernexposure
Summary: Who knows what might have been, in another life?
1. Chapter 1

**Across the Sky in Stars**

 **A/N:** Updates to this may not be quick or regular in coming... Still, I hope someone out there might find something interesting in it. Thanks, as always, to MissyHissy3 for the beta read.

* * *

 _Stars, I have seen them fall,  
_ _But when they drop and die  
_ _No star is lost at all  
_ _From all the star-sown sky.  
_ _The toil of all that be  
_ _Helps not the primal fault;  
_ _It rains into the sea,  
_ _And still the sea is salt._

\- A. E. Housman

 **Prologue**

They say, don't they, that one should not spend too much time looking into the abyss, for the abyss may choose to look back. What hope then, for a woman who has spent her life crossing one? Here she stands, on this little naked spit of metal reaching out into the void. Does she think she is immune? Does she really imagine that she can provide some sort of effective barrier between the people ranged behind her on this narrow bridge to nowhere and the gigantic, awful _nothing_ that has already engulfed them all? Does she think she can accomplish what even Canute, somewhere in his stubborn heart of hearts, must have known was futile?

In the end, after all that rage, all that burning, all that endless, god-awful struggle, the snuffing out of her candle doesn't even register amid the general incandescence of the cosmos. Moreover, when oblivion comes, it is perversely silent. When she stands before what she instantly understands to be the conclusion of everything she knows to be true, the noise that accompanies her epiphany is as much of a void as the darkness through which it travelled to claim her.

The order to clear the bridge is seconds old. Everything around her is a blur of motion. _Voyager_ 's shields have failed and consoles everywhere are breaching against the overload. The deck bucks and writhes as if the ship herself is trying to shrug off desecration. On the viewscreen the hulking carcasses of other dead vessels cast shadows against _Voyager_ 's pale hull, spectres cut by the ragged jealousy of enemy fire.

Tom Paris is the last to leave his post and to make him do so she has to drag him from his beloved pilot's chair. His fingers are still questing for a way to save them when she pushes him ahead of her, up the steps. Tuvok is holding the Turbolift doors open, Harry Kim is just behind him, shouting, shouting, _shouting_ though she cannot hear a word. Both of Harry's arms are outstretched towards them, willing them to hurry, to be faster than the hell coming at them from the abyss.

She can't help looking back. A different ribbon of light is on the viewscreen now: white-gold, impossibly beautiful, burning closer, closer, twisting in the void as if it is alive. It is like nothing she has ever seen before.

 _She always did have an explorer's heart._ Later, this is what they will say between themselves, to try to explain why their Captain stepped towards it, instead of turning away.

It could be true. It really could.

But it isn't.

Not even slightly.

[TBC]


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Many thanks to MissyHissy3 for the speedy beta reading of this despite the fact that she's got her own lovely fic, Turning Point, to think about! Any mistakes are caused by me, fiddling about after the fact.

* * *

 **One**

All his dead surrounded him. They flickered at him from the darkness, faces recognisable even in tatters: _Timon, Bathas, Miriam, Royun, Fron…_ They pleaded with him across two impossible distances, the first created by an alien whim, the second by the violence of their ends.

 _We needed you. Where were you?_

 _You left us._

 _You weren't here, Chakotay._

 _So many dead._

 _So many lost._

He twisted his head, but even in sleep he knew there was no escape. He could not go back. He could not get away. There was nowhere to run: from them, from their deaths, from his absence, from his unwitting dereliction.

 _You left us, Chakotay._

 _You left us..._

 _Chakotay._

 _Commander._

"…Commander Chakotay…"

Chakotay jerked awake with a ragged gasp choking his throat and the sense that someone had spoken directly into his ear. There was a heavy throb in his temple, squatting there with the remnants of the dead as another voice permeated his quarters.

" _Sickbay to Commander Chakotay, please respond."_

He pressed a thumb and forefinger into his eyes, started to speak, cleared his throat, started again.

"Chakotay to sickbay. Go ahead, Doctor. What is it?"

" _My apologies for waking you, Commander, but you're needed here."_

Chakotay was already on his feet, reaching for his uniform. "What's happened?"

There was a pause. "I think it would be easier for you to see for yourself than it would be for me to explain."

Irritation sparked along Chakotay's exhausted synapses, though he couldn't be bothered to voice his ire. There had been no echo of a red alert. The EMH's voice lacked the urgency he had come to associate with news of the worst kind. Chakotay would be starting yet another shift on even less sleep than he'd managed the night previously. The nights got shorter, the days just kept on getting longer.

"I'll be there shortly. Chakotay out."

In the small sliver of space that alleged itself to be his bathroom Chakotay began to shave, staring at himself in the mirror. Bleary eyes stared back out of a face made flaccid by lack of sleep and a surfeit of stress. He turned his head and regarded the inked lines of his tattoo, which faded a little more each year. He wondered if there would come a time when it would be indistinguishable from the lines forged by age. He wondered if it would matter, or whether, perhaps, that was the point. Perhaps the lines formed by the point of a needle in his youth and the ones he earned as a man were supposed to grow towards each other, to become one. Perhaps that moment was supposed to signify something: an arrival, an apex of understanding. He suspected that if so, it would be another test he would fail.

He wondered whether, when it happened, they would all still be here, or wherever ' _here_ ' was at the time: far from anything and anywhere and anyone they knew. Far from the lives – or the deaths – they all should have had.

 _You weren't here, Chakotay…_

The man in the mirror blinked at him. Together they tried to dispel the echo of ghosts.

* * *

When he arrived in sickbay ten minutes later, the first thing he saw was the Captain, lying unconscious on a bio-bed in a torn uniform streaked with soot and grease. There was no sign of the EMH.

"Captain?" He reached the bed in three strides. Her face was mottled with bruises and cuts. Her bottom lip had been badly busted and only partially healed. What seemed to be a severe burn flashed up from her neck and over her jaw, whorls of scarred flesh patterning her pale skin, dappling her nose.

"Computer, activate the EMH!"

"I'm here, Commander." The Doctor appeared from his office, PADD in hand.

Chakotay spun toward him. "Report! What happened?"

"That's what we're currently trying to establish."

The familiar rasp of her voice hit him like a sledgehammer. He turned to see Janeway walking out of the Doctor's office, also with a PADD in her hand. Chakotay's mind reeled for a second, taking in her unharmed face before looking back at the woman on the bed.

"It's not me, Chakotay. We don't know who – or _what_ – she is."

Chakotay looked at the woman standing a few feet away, apparently completely untouched by whatever had befallen her doppelganger. Still, there were dark circles beneath her eyes. Her lips were set in a blank line, but then that wasn't unusual these days. They hadn't held the curve of a smile to them in longer than he could remember. Neither of them had had much to laugh about in a long time. Especially not together.

"What happened?" he asked, again.

The Captain shook her head. "According to both the bridge officers' reports and the corresponding readings from Astrometrics, absolutely nothing. A perfectly uneventful Gamma shift was nearing its end when the helm gave a small but sudden jolt and the next thing the bridge crew knew, I was lying spark out on the floor in front of them. Except they knew it wasn't me, because they'd all seen me enter the ready room not two minutes earlier."

Chakotay frowned. "When was this?"

Janeway glanced at the PADD in her hand. "Twenty-five minutes ago."

Chakotay watched her face. "You didn't go to red alert and you didn't inform me?"

Her expression hardened. "I informed you fifteen minutes ago, Commander, when I asked the Doctor to call you to sickbay."

They stared at each other for a moment. She apparently didn't feel it necessary to explain her decision regarding the red alert.

"All right," he said. "What do we know?"

"It's the Captain," the EMH said, simply. "Certainly in all respects that matter."

Chakotay moved toward the bed again. "Species 8472?"

"No," Janeway said. "That was our first thought, but no, it seems not. She's human."

"I've compared scans of our Captain Janeway with this woman and the only differences are superficial," the Doctor went on. "At a genetic level, they are identical. They also share other markers – a wrist broken and healed in childhood, they both suffered a collapsed lung in their early twenties and both display the same broken and healed ribs."

"This Janeway, however," the Captain went on, waving a finger at the woman on the bed, "has additional injuries, even beyond the ones we can see."

"Most, it would seem, sustained in the past six years," added the EMH.

"Six years," Chakotay repeated. "That would coincide with…"

"The year that _Voyager_ arrived in the Delta Quadrant, yes."

The three of them were silent for a moment. Chakotay watched the woman on the bed.

"A clone?"

"Not unless the duplication happened the year we encountered the Caretaker," Janeway countered. "And it doesn't explain where she's been for six years, how she's still got a Starfleet uniform, or how she appeared on the bridge out of thin air, and in this state."

"Parallel timestream? Could _Voyager_ have unknowingly encountered some sort of anomaly?"

From the unhappy tightening of Janeway's mouth, Chakotay could tell where her thoughts were resting. "We'll have to investigate that possibility. In the meantime… we've done all we can without talking to her directly. And we think it would be better for her not to see me for the time being."

"You want me to be the one to talk to her?"

Janeway's attention was fixed on the PADD in her hand. "The Doctor is concerned that being confronted by a duplicate version of herself when she's in such a weakened state could be too much of a shock. I'm not sure I agree, but in this instance I defer to his judgement. Is that a problem?"

Chakotay watched the top of her head for a second. "No, Captain."

She looked up and met his eye. The hardness he saw there – that he so often saw there, now – glinted like ice. "I'll observe from the Doctor's office." With a curt nod, she turned her back and walked away.

Chakotay turned to look at the EMH, who was poised with a hypospray in one hand.

"Try to keep her calm," said the Doctor. "She's suffered extensive physical trauma and she's still healing. Wherever she's from, apparently they don't have the same access to medical supplies that we do."

Chakotay stepped closer, taking a moment to gather his thoughts. Looking down at the woman lying on the bed, he took in the fine lines radiating from the corners of her eyes, visible even amid the bruises. In them he could imagine the smile that had been absent from her counterpart's face for too long.

He looked up at the EMH and gave a nod. The Doctor stepped forward and depressed the hypospray against the woman's neck, the hiss echoing away into the sterile atmosphere of the room as the hologram stepped back again.

There was a second of inactivity and then she came around with a harsh gasp, gulping air and instantly moving, trying to sit up.

"Take it easy," Chakotay said, softly, gently pushing her back down again before the Doctor had a chance to intervene. "You're safe. Move slowly. Catch your breath."

The woman stared up at him from eyes that were like a memory of something he knew from years past. She seemed even paler than she had been when unconscious. She reached out to grip his upper arms and the raw strength in her small hands took him by surprise. Her mouth worked, as if trying to form a sound.

" _Chakotay?"_

The whisper she forced out of her throat was hollow, barely there.

"Yes."

"Chakotay," she whispered again. "Chakotay. _Chakotay_."

He glanced at the EMH, wondering if she'd sustained a head injury he didn't know about.

"Am I dead?" she asked, her voice shaking. She let go of one of his arms, moving it to his face, instead. "Is this… _how_?"

Chakotay took her hand and lifted it gently away from his face. "You're not dead. You are aboard the USS _Voyager._ Can you tell me your name?"

At his words something reverberated through the woman's eyes. She blinked and pulled her hand away from his.

"I am Captain Kathryn Janeway of the USS _Voyager,"_ she said, her voice gaining a little in strength. She levered herself up again, looking around. "What's happening?"

"That's what we're trying to work out," Chakotay said, keeping his voice low and steady, aiming to soothe. "What do you remember?"

She looked back at him, meeting his eyes for a second before they once again roved over his face. Her expression wavered again and he wondered what she'd seen in his face to inspire that reaction. "My watch," she said, her voice dropping again. "I reached for it but it wasn't there. It must have been knocked from my hip when we were attacked. I turned back to look for it, and-" Something flashed through her eyes and they widened. "We were attacked! _Voyager_ is under attack! I have to–"

She was off the bed before Chakotay could stop her, taking a step before her legs gave way. He caught her before she crumpled completely.

"I have to get up there," she said, voice desperate, struggling against him. "I have to-"

"Stop," he told her, trying to hold her still. "Stop, please, stop. _Kathryn_ -!"

He heard her sharp intake of breath as she stopped fighting him. As the hiss of the EMH's hypospray faded away, she looked up at him with an expression so plangent that it stabbed a nail through his chest. A millisecond later she was unconscious again. He lifted her onto the bed.

"Well," said Janeway, appearing from the Doctor's office. "So much for that being a calmer awakening." She tapped her combadge. "Janeway to Tuvok. Please report to the bridge, we need a long-range sensor scan and threat analysis. I'll be there shortly. Janeway out."

She came to a stop beside Chakotay. For a moment they both looked down at the duplicate of Captain Kathryn Janeway of the USS _Voyager_.

"Analysis?" she asked, quietly.

"I don't think there was any dissembling going on there," Chakotay said. "She thinks she's you."

Janeway nodded. "All right. Doctor, we'll leave her in your care. Let us know when you think it would be appropriate to try speaking to her again. Chakotay, you and I had better get up to the bridge and talk to Tuvok."

"Yes, Captain." He nodded to the Doctor and then headed out of sickbay. Half way to the door Chakotay realised that Janeway wasn't behind him and turned back.

She was still standing over the copy of herself. As he watched, Janeway reached out and touched the woman's left hand.

Chakotay had missed it completely, but now he saw what had caught the Captain's attention: a thin line of gold glinting in the artificial light.

A wedding ring.

[TBC]


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Thank you to those who are reading despite my caveat about updates! Thanks also to MissyHissy3 for her excellent beta notes. On this one I added a few lines after she'd seen it, so any mistakes are, as always, mine. Happy Friday, everyone.

* * *

 **Two**

Kathryn Janeway stood in her ready room, a mug of coffee cooling on the desk, transfixed by the photograph she gripped in one hand. It hadn't seen the light of day – or what passed for the light of day on a starship, anyway – for several years. Still, she remembered so clearly the moment it had been taken. They had been in the garden having just found out that Mollie was going to have puppies. Kathryn had also just returned from the meeting at Starfleet HQ in which she had learned that she was up for the captaincy of _Voyager._ It wasn't that they'd really planned to mark that double moment, but when she'd seen the image she'd immediately resolved to put it in a physical frame. It was a family photograph, after all. _Her_ family, a glimpse of the future caught in one moment.

Mark had been convinced that _Voyager_ was already hers in all but name. He'd also told her that if she wanted, they could move the date of the wedding so that she had nothing else to think about until after _Voyager_ 's maiden voyage was complete. He wanted her to enjoy the day as much as he knew he was going to, and he also knew that her first command mission would naturally take the majority of her attention until it was complete.

"Don't worry," he'd said, with a warm, slow kiss, in the deep tone of voice that always sparked something hot and melting in the pit of her belly. "I know how important this posting to _Voyager_ will be to you."

She'd put her hand to his face. " _You're_ important to me. Our _marriage_ is important to me. I don't want you to think I'd put anything before it, before it's even begun!"

Mark had smiled, taking her hand and kissing her fingers as he'd pulled her closer. "Kathryn, I've waited my entire life to find the woman I want to spend the rest of it with, and I'm lucky enough to be able to say she wants the same. I can wait a little longer to actually seal the deal. Go be a captain and do it with just as much of yourself as I know you do everything. I'll still be here when you get back."

She'd accepted his suggestion because it had never occurred to her that her decisions on this fateful mission would force him into becoming a liar.

Kathryn set the photograph of that other life down on her desk and picked up the coffee instead. She walked to the window, where the glint of distant stars made her think anew of the shine of gold on her counterpart's finger. She wondered how that other conversation had gone, if there had indeed been one. There were numerous times over the past six years when she'd imagined a different scenario, one where, instead of postponing the wedding, they had brought it forward so that they were married before she'd left. What difference would it have made, had she and Mark been married when this voyage had begun? Would she have felt the loneliness less, knowing she'd sworn herself to another person who had taken the same vow? Or would the guilt have been even greater still, knowing that she'd left her new husband alone so soon and in such a state of terrible uncertainty? Would that _Dear John_ letter still have come, or would Mark have still been waiting for her, even now?

It seemed to her the woman currently lying unconscious in sickbay would be able to answer those exact questions. The very fact that she wore the ring at all, six years into this journey, answered some of them. Kathryn couldn't imagine an instance that would see any version of herself retaining the ring of a man who had himself moved on.

Mark Johnson. How long was it since Kathryn had imagined herself as his wife? How strange it was, to see another version of oneself, another possibility of how one's life may have turned out.

Janeway sighed and turned away from the window. She'd taken these five minutes of respite to think her own thoughts after an intense morning of meetings and analysis. Long-range scans showed nothing that looked even remotely like a threat. The space in _Voyager_ 's vicinity betrayed nothing that might explain where this other her had appeared from, or how, or why. It was as if this burned and battered version of Kathryn Janeway (or was it Kathryn Johnson?) had materialised out of thin air. At the senior staff meeting the idea had even been floated that this was some sort of game being played by Q, but if that were the case the troublesome being had yet to show himself.

Instinct told her this was something else, however. She thought Chakotay had been right with his second supposition – that this was somehow a version of her from a parallel universe.

It had been strange, seeing that other her wake to her first officer. Uncomfortable, even, in some undefined way that she was loath to analyse. Involuntarily, something in her chest had constricted as that other her had said his name. Whatever the state of the _Voyager_ she had left behind, it seemed that there was still an amicable relationship between its command team. Janeway couldn't remember the last time she had said Chakotay's name out of anything but necessity. Seeing him at all felt as if she were standing on tiptoe, peering over a wall built of all their many mistakes, cemented together by the accumulated turmoil of years. Since the events surrounding their discovery of the _Equinox_ she could barely look him in the eye. _What happened to you?_ She wanted to ask, in her more plaintive moments. Y _ou told me I wasn't alone, and I believed you. But I am. Oh, I am._

Then again, she had no one to blame but herself. She had leaned on him for six years, had turned to him again and again, had allowed something to flicker in her heart that had always caused her as much guilt as it did pleasure. But the tangle that she had thought had been _them_ had turned out to only be _her_. More fool Kathryn Janeway for thinking of herself as anything other than captain. And so she had withdrawn. She had hardened. She had cut herself off, even from him. _Especially_ from him.

Kathryn thought of that gold band again. Perhaps that was the answer to how the friendship of that other Janeway and Chakotay seemed to have survived for six years.

" _Sickbay to Captain Janeway."_

Janeway blinked and answered. "Go ahead."

" _Our patient is awake, Captain, and ready for visitors."_

She took a deep breath. "I'm on my way, Doctor."

* * *

The 'other' Kathryn Janeway was fully conscious, sitting up in bed dressed in sickbay scrubs with a mirror in one hand as she examined her newly healed face. She looked up as the Captain walked in. They regarded each other with open curiosity. Now that she was upright, Janeway could see that her counterpart's hair was a little shorter than her own. It was cleaner and neater than the first time she'd seen it, too, tucked neatly behind her ears.

"Well," said the Captain, noting, too, that the burns had all but vanished. "You're looking a little better, at least."

She watched as Kathryn Janeway put down the mirror with a faint smile. "It's strange. I was so used to the scars that I hardly even noticed them any more."

The Captain moved closer, clenching and unclenching one hand in order to release some of the tension that had crept into her shoulder. She wondered, briefly, if there were studies that had contemplated the psychological strain of meeting oneself. Perhaps she should do some research. On the other hand, perhaps in some cases ignorance really was bliss.

"You'd had them for a while?"

Her reflection smiled again, a small gesture laced with a sadness that seemed to linger, and nodded. "Two years, give or take." She glanced around sickbay. "You never encountered the Krenim Imperium?"

"The Krenim?" Kathryn thought for a moment, trying to sift through years of alien encounters. "I'd have to check the logs to be sure. If we did, it wasn't a significant meeting."

The woman on the biobed nodded. "Count yourselves lucky."

The doors to sickbay slid open. In the second before the Captain had the chance to turn around, she saw an expression flash across her counterpart's face: something raw, unguarded. Painful, almost. It fled as quickly as it had appeared.

"Captain," Chakotay greeted, as he approached, and then looked at their visitor. "And… _Captain_. It's good to see you looking better."

"Thank you," said the patient, softly, and then cleared her throat. "Have you found anything to explain what I'm doing here, or how I can get back to _Voyager_?"

"Not yet," said the Captain.

Kathryn Janeway bit her lip and then rubbed a hand over her eyes. "I have to find a way. We were under attack. My crew needs me."

"We understand," Chakotay said. His voice was low, gentle, and it drew her eyes back to his face. Her gaze lingered, watching his mouth move as he said, "Perhaps it would help us a little to know the circumstances of the attack. You mentioned the Krenim Imperium. Were they responsible?"

The woman on the bed looked away with a shake of her head. "No. We don't know who they were, but it wasn't the Krenim. That was just where it started."

"What do you mean?" the Captain asked.

Her mirror image twined her fingers together. "The Krenim had technology that could change history," she said, her voice quiet and steady. "Their commander was desperate to restore his people to a former time when their people were powerful and content. _Voyager_ unwittingly wandered into the middle of a war, and the resulting damage we sustained during the year we struggled across their space was immense and irreparable. We've been suffering ever since. We're prey for every hostile force that wants to take a chance." She shook her head. "Whoever it was who came for us this time didn't bother to identify themselves before they attacked. I have to get back. We've lost so much, I–" she sucked in a breath and looked up. "I surely don't need to explain it to you… Captain."

It was true. Had the roles been reversed, Janeway could easily imagine how frantic she herself would be to find herself in this situation.

She held up a hand. "I assure you, we want to return you just as soon as we can. But at the moment… we're still working out how what happened, let alone how to reverse it."

There was a moment of silence. The woman looked around, her face lined with an infinite sadness. "It's strange," she said, her voice barely even scratching the air, "to see _Voyager_ so unharmed-" Her gaze reached Chakotay and she swallowed, dropping her gaze to her hands again. "To see her _people_ so unharmed."

"You've… lost a lot of the crew," Janeway realised.

Her counterpart sighed. "Yes." She lifted her chin and squared her jaw, but she couldn't hide the raw emotion in her eyes. "Which is all the more reason that I get back to where I belong as soon as I can."

"I understand," said the Captain, as the Doctor appeared from his office, bearing a PADD.

"Captain, Captain, Commander," the EMH greeted, apparently not at all phased by the conundrum of the duality before him. "I'm pleased to say that our guest is doing well. I would suggest that the best course of action would be to allow her to rest in crew quarters, rather than here in sickbay. It's not the most salubrious of surroundings, after all… despite my best efforts. And, I might add, my numerous requests for-"

"Very well, Doctor," Janeway said, cutting him off before the tirade could develop. "Chakotay, perhaps I can prevail upon you to find our guest a suitable room."

Her first officer smiled slightly. "Of course, Captain. Perhaps I can suggest the state guest quarters on deck three?"

Janeway frowned. "Didn't we reassign those as storage a year ago?"

"We did, but I anticipated that this eventuality may arise and assigned a work crew to remove the containers. They've been working for the past few hours, so it should be ready."

"Right," she said, for some reason a little disturbed by the idea that her doppelganger would be sleeping just down the corridor from her own quarters. "Well, that seems perfectly reasonable to me. Is that acceptable to you… Captain?"

Their guest swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. "That's going to get old very quickly, isn't it?"

"What is?" Janeway asked.

Her mirror self gave her a steady look. "A ship can't have two captains. You're the captain of this _Voyager_. Here, I'm just… Kathryn. _You're_ Captain Janeway."

Janeway blew out a breath. "It might be easier to have distinct monikers."

"That's agreed, then," said Kathryn, and glanced over to the Doctor. "Do you have a working replicator here?"

"Of course."

"Good. Then I need some new clothes. Not a uniform, or at least not one in command red. Something else." Kathryn must have seen the expression on Janeway's face, because she twisted her mouth into a grimace of a smile. "I'm banking on it not being for long, Captain. But I don't want your crew confusing me with you. That will make things far too complicated for everyone. Better that they can tell us apart easily, especially since I intend to work beside you all very closely to see that this is resolved as soon as possible."

The Captain agreed with a brief nod, marvelling at how very calmly the other woman seemed to be taking every turn of these uncommon events. She wondered if this was how other people saw her own self, or whether this other Kathryn's unique experiences in the Delta Quadrant had shaped in her an even more indomitable spirit.

"Very well," she said. "I need to return to the bridge. You're free to go about the ship as you please, although for now we're going to have a member of our security personnel accompany you. I'll get Tuvok to send someone down shortly. I'm sure you understand."

Kathryn gave a wry smile. "I wouldn't expect anything less, Captain. Though I would like to ask… a favour… in the first instance."

"Of course."

Kathryn paused for a moment, dropping her gaze. She twined her hands together in front of her before taking a breath and looking up at Chakotay. "I'd like to request that the Commander here be the one to accompany me on the walk to my new quarters. I won't keep him longer than that, and I'll be sure to wait there until my security detail arrives."

The Captain looked at Chakotay, seeing her flash of surprise echoed in his eyes. "Very well," she said. "Commander, I'll see you on the bridge."

Janeway left, hearing Chakotay's slightly belated "Aye Captain", as she walked away. There was something monumentally unsettling about the idea that another her was about to have a conversation to which she was not privy. She wondered what this other her could possibly want to say to her first officer. She wondered how appropriate it would be for her to order him to tell her later.

 _She's not you_ , she reminded herself, firmly. _She just_ looks _like you. Be firm on that distinction, or things are going to get very confusing._

As Janeway waited for the turbolift, she clenched and unclenched her hand again, yet the tension in her shoulder seemed only to increase.

[TBC]


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: As always, thanks to MissyHissy3 for the beta read! Thanks also to anyone reading and reviewing. Much love. x

* * *

 **Three**

Kathryn dressed quickly in the uniform the Doctor had replicated for her. Its shoulders bore not command red, but the gentler shade of science teal. Pulling it on felt strange, less because of the difference in position that the colour implied and more because she could not remember the last time she had worn a piece of clean clothing. Besides which, it had taken two attempts for the computer to produce one that fitted her correctly: the malnutrition the Doctor had already begun to treat had been made manifest in the fact that her measurements deviated from those of her counterpart.

She wondered why she wasn't more shocked to find herself here, wherever 'here' was. Perhaps it had yet to kick in. On the other hand, perhaps she simply had trauma fatigue, this being the latest in a long, _long_ line of events that, in any other circumstance, would have seen her signed off duty and under the care of a counsellor. Maybe her brain was no longer capable of shock.

Except that this was manifestly not true. If it were, Kathryn's hands would not be shaking as they were at this precise moment. She would not be having trouble stepping out of this cubicle to face the man she knew was waiting for her outside.

 _It's not him,_ she told herself, sternly, _any more than she is you. Pull yourself together. You have work to do._

Taking a deep breath, she gave the hem of her jacket a hard yank down towards her hips – it was still slightly too large – and stepped out of the room she had used to change.

Chakotay was standing on the other side of sickbay, his hands clasped behind his back. As she emerged he smiled and drew his shoulders back, a slight gesture that implied a coming to attention, although in this context she held no rank at all. As Kathryn walked towards him she saw his attention drift to the colour at her shoulders and the smile became a fraction warmer still, touched with a hint of amusement. The expression twisted a knife in her gut, producing a pain that lanced up her through her chest and into her throat, thickening her tongue and threatening her speech. The look on her face as she tried to control her reaction must have seemed to him to be something other than it truly was, because when his eyes met hers he dropped the smile completely and the look in his eyes cooled. It was a change that only caused her pain to increase, and she saw what folly it had been to ask him to be the one to escort her to her new quarters: a moment of weakness she cursed herself for.

 _It's not him. It's not._

"Commander," she said, relieved at how level the rasp of her voice remained. "It was wrong of me to ask you to interrupt your duties. Please – I can wait here for my security detail. They can escort me to my quarters – you should return to the bridge, where you're needed."

He frowned slightly, his gaze flicking over her face as if attempting to read something there. "It's not an interruption," he assured her. "I would have suggested it if you hadn't. As first officer the crew's welfare is my responsibility, and you," he said, indicating her clean uniform, "are now part of this crew, Kathryn, even if only temporarily. We can talk as we walk."

After a moment's more hesitation she nodded. He smiled again and held out an arm towards the door. Together they headed out into the corridor and towards the 'lift.

"As the Captain said, you seem to be taking this remarkably well," he said, "but I want you to know that if you need anything – even if it's just someone with whom to talk over your experiences – you can talk to me."

She swallowed and grimaced a smile, looking down at her fingers, which had twined themselves together, hard. "Thank you, Commander, that's very kind of you. I'll be fine as soon as I know there's a way I can get back to my _Voyager_."

The turbolift arrived and he nodded as they stepped inside. "Deck three," he said to the air.

For a moment he stood with his face in profile to her, and she could not help tracing the lines of his tattoo with her eyes. A sharp, horrible grief clenched itself around her heart, and Kathryn had to reach out a hand to brace herself against wall of the 'lift. She turned away, sharply, not wanting him to see.

 _It's not him, it's not. It's NOT._

But of course it was too late.

"Kathryn?" he asked, reaching out a hand and laying it on her shoulder. Despite herself she reached up and grasped it for a moment before letting go and forcing herself upright. He dropped his hand and she felt its absence as if he'd removed one of her own limbs.

"I'm sorry," she said, dashing away the sudden tears. "It… This is proving harder than I thought."

He was watching her, she knew, though Kathryn could not bring herself to meet his eye. They reached deck three and the 'lift doors opened onto the familiar emptiness of this deck's corridor. She stepped out ahead of him, marvelling at the difference to distract herself from other thoughts. On her _Voyager_ deck three had been uninhabitable for months. She'd long since moved to crew quarters elsewhere.

Chakotay walked behind her, and when he spoke his voice was as soft as that first time she'd come around in sickbay and seen the shocking, impossible reality of his face above her.

"I think I know what the problem is," he said. "You've already told us that you've lost a lot of people. Chakotay on your _Voyager_ … he's dead. Isn't he?"

They reached the door of the guest quarters in silence because her throat was too tight to allow her to speak. Chakotay opened the door for her and she stepped into it before turning around.

"We lost Commander Chakotay six months ago," she said, her voice as brittle as her heart. "He died trying to evacuate deck six." She looked down at her hands, frowning a little. "He saved the crew but the section lost containment before he was able to escape himself. We recovered his body, but it was too late to save him."

She looked up to find Chakotay watching her with open sympathy. "I'm sorry," he said. "Seeing me alive and well must be bringing back difficult memories."

Kathryn gave a strangled half-laugh that had nothing to do with humour. Her eyes blurred again. "That's something of an understatement, Commander."

"You can call me Chakotay," he said. "I've noticed that apart from that first time you woke, when you were clearly disoriented, you've only called me by my rank. If it makes it easier for you to distinguish between us – if you always called _him_ Commander – then call _me_ Chakotay. Perhaps that would help?"

She stared at him for a moment and then stepped further into the dim light of her new quarters. Chakotay followed, the door hushing shut behind him. Kathryn turned away, looking out at the stars, still now, since the ship was at full stop. She turned back towards him again, adrift on a sea she had no idea how to navigate, her grief turning unexpectedly to a ferocious anger. She fumbled at the collar of her new uniform and he watched as she pulled out the thin gold chain she always wore, now, around her neck. She grasped the plain gold ring that was threaded onto it, pressing its perfect circle hard between her thumb and forefinger.

"This was his," she said, her voice rough with pain as well as anger. "So no, I didn't call him _Commander_. And I miss him. I _miss_ him, and I know you're not him but you look like him and I can't-"

She ran out of energy mid-sentence, without even knowing what it was she had been about to say. Kathryn was suddenly filled with a void, dark and cold, hollow and terrible. She turned away, still holding her dead husband's ring in her fingers, and looked out at the great emptiness that held the stars, because she could not bear to see that face, and know it was not his.

[TBC]


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Thanks to MissyHissy3 for betaing!

* * *

 **Four**

Her words punched the air from his lungs as surely as if he'd taken a fist to the solar plexus. Chakotay stared at the rigid cant of her shoulders as she looked out into the eternal night, twisting the ring between her fingers. For a second he was so shocked that he could feel nothing at all. Then sensation returned, his heart lurching into a rapid beat that belied the inaction of his stance. He felt light-headed for a moment, as if he had been thrown into freefall.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, a moment later. "It – I'm fine. It just… takes me unawares from time to time. And seeing you… your face… You are so like him." She took a deep breath and turned around again, tucking the gold chain back beneath her uniform as she did so. "But I am perfectly aware that you are _not_ him."

Chakotay cast around for words that might seem appropriate in this situation, but the only ones that came to mind formed questions he could not ask. His prolonged silence provoked a frown of consternation from Kathryn as she took a step back towards him.

"Are _you_ all right?" she asked him.

"Ah – yes," he said, forcing himself to assume a semblance of normalcy. "I – am sorry for your loss, and the distress my presence is causing."

Her frown persisted. Her gaze shifted from his face to his left hand, taking in the clear absence.

"You don't have that kind of relationship, do you?" she asked. "You and your Captain Janeway?"

"No," he said. "No, we don't."

She looked up at him, and for a moment he wondered if she'd read something in his face that was more than he'd intended to give away.

"Never?" she asked.

He shook his head. "We're in command together," he said, the residual echoes of shock still reverberating through his nerves, forcing an explanation that had never been his.

Kathryn actually smiled a little at that, though the expression was a sad one. "Poor Captain Janeway," she said, softly. "Six years of forcing herself to believe that matters. Four years was enough, for me. I came close to losing him one too many times, and…" She shook her head. "The fact that in another life we were married is more of a shock to you than the idea of that version of you being dead. There is something about that… that makes me very sad."

"Well, as you pointed out," Chakotay said, searching for solid ground, "we are not the same people. My captain is not you, anymore than I am your Chakotay. Maybe that's the only practical way for all of us to approach this. To remember that, however we look, we're very different people."

Kathryn's gaze shifted to his tattoo, then to his lips, then back to his eyes. "I have a feeling that's going to be easier for you to do than for me. So far… you're more like my husband than unlike him."

Chakotay had no idea what to say to that.

"I've made you uncomfortable," Kathryn said. "I'm sorry."

"It's… all right," he told her, and then smiled a little. "Actually, it's helpful. Your openness… is making it easier for me to think of you and the Captain in distinct terms."

Kathryn's face took on a look of sadness. "I hope for her sake she isn't the me I was before you," she said, quietly. "Although if she isn't, I'm not sure I want to know. I'm not sure I want to know a version of myself that could walk away from a man like you and not be affected by it."

Chakotay shifted, distinctly uncomfortable.

Kathryn tipped her head to one side, a very slight glint in her eye. "Too open?"

He couldn't help but smile at that. "Perhaps a little."

She returned the smile. "Noted, Commander. Will you tell her?"

"I shall have to. Though at this precise moment, I have no idea quite how."

Her smile grew warmer, and the affection he saw in her expression jolted something in his heart. "You'll find a way. You always do."

* * *

From her quarters he went straight to the bridge. As he stood in the turbolift Chakotay tried to work out how to broach the subject with the Captain and quickly realised that the only way was as quickly and directly as possible. He wondered whether she would be as shocked as he had been – how shocked, really, he still was – and couldn't imagine otherwise.

The two of them, married. He wondered for how long, which was only one of about a million questions that had spun through his mind as he'd stood there in the aftermath of her revelation. Kathryn had suggested that the relationship had begun in the fourth year of their journey, which meant that they must have had barely a year and a half together before her Chakotay had met his end. How had the relationship begun? Who had initiated it? He tried to remember what their lives had been like two years ago. What had been the difference that had pushed them towards each other, instead of apart? And in purely practical terms, how did it work, having a command team who were so intimately connected?

 _When, exactly,_ he wondered, _did she fall in love with him? How? Why?_

As soon as he'd thought it, Chakotay realised that pursuing that train of thought was a bad idea.

 _She's not the Kathryn Janeway you know,_ he told himself. _Don't even begin to let yourself think about it. It's not relevant. It's just a fact._

When he got to the bridge, Janeway was standing with Harry Kim, reviewing something on the ensign's console. She looked up as Chakotay approached.

"Commander," she said, by way of greeting. "How is our guest? Settled in?"

"As much as can be expected, in the circumstances," Chakotay said, glancing at Harry. "Captain – can we speak privately?"

She gave a slight frown but nodded before turning to Harry. "Keep an eye on it, Ensign. Talk to Seven, see if she can shed any light."

"Yes, Captain."

Janeway led the way into the ready room. She headed straight for the replicator.

"Coffee, black," she said, before turning to him. "Tea?"

"Thank you Captain, but no."

Janeway picked up the mug and headed for her desk. "Harry thinks he might have found something on long-range sensors," she told him. "A strange energy reading moving away from us at warp speed. It doesn't appear to be a ship."

Chakotay stood easy, his hands behind his back, though he felt anything but at ease. "Let's hope it can provide some answers. And perhaps a way to return our guest to where she belongs."

The Captain moved behind her desk and put down her coffee before dropping into her chair. "Indeed. Did she tell you anything useful about what she remembers?"

"Not about the events that brought her here, no," he said, carefully. "I think a proper debriefing is probably in order. She's intending to come to the bridge shortly."

Janeway nodded. "Very well. We should make sure the whole senior staff is present. Seven, too. She may well ask questions that we wouldn't think of."

"Yes, Captain."

The Captain took a mouthful of coffee and looked up at him. "Was there something else? You wanted to talk privately, didn't you? Is there a problem?"

Chakotay took a breath. "Not a problem, no. Just… something that you need to know. About… where she's from."

Janeway put down the mug, looking up at him intently. "What is it?"

He looked her in the eye. "In her reality, Chakotay is dead."

"I see," said Janeway, frowning. "That's awful, of course, but I don't-"

"That's not all, Captain," he interrupted. "In that reality, the two of them – Kathryn and Chakotay - were a couple. In fact, they were husband and wife."

The silence that reigned was brief but absolute.

"They-" Janeway began, but her voice failed. She stared at him, her face paling. " _What_?"

"They were married," he said, clearly. "They met and married on their version of _Voyager_."

The Captain looked away. She was extremely still.

"I thought you should know," he said, into the silence.

She didn't look at him. Her fingers had curled into themselves where they rested on her desktop. They remained like that for a moment, a tableau of quiet shock and confusion.

 _Two years ago,_ Chakotay found himself thinking. _If we had learned of this two years ago, how would each of us have reacted? What were we like, the two of us, back then?_

After a moment more Janeway cleared her throat, dropping her gaze to the desk. "Well," she said, quietly. "That's certainly… unexpected information."

He smiled a little. "Yes. Circumstances in general aboard their _Voyager_ seem to be very different."

Janeway looked up at him with a nod. She seemed preoccupied, but then Chakotay couldn't blame her for that. "Thank you, Commander. You have the bridge. Let me know when… Kathryn… arrives."

"Yes, Captain."

He turned to leave, but she called him back again.

"Chakotay," she said. "I think it would be best to keep this from the crew. They don't need to know, and I can't help but think that it would only…" she trailed off, apparently searching for the right words.

"I understand, Captain," he said. "And I agree. I'll pass it on to Kathryn – although something tells me she will already have reached the same conclusion."

Janeway nodded and smiled slightly. It was a small, lop-sided expression, one that Chakotay had seen not half an hour earlier on another face. One that, in that moment, seemed far more similar than he had been forcing himself to think.

[TBC]


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N:** Apologies to anyone who actually remembers this story for the terrible delay. Up until the new year I was insanely busy, and since the new year I have been on the road. I'm still on the road, actually, and when I get back home I will be insanely busy again, but I'll try to get this out anyway. Many thanks to MissyHissy for beta reading despite the fact that I'm on the other side of the planet and also that editing on an iPad turns out to be way harder than just writing on one...

* * *

 **Six**

If seeing herself lying prone in sickbay had been strange, seeing another her address the crew was even stranger. Janeway tried to tell herself that this had nothing to do with the revelation that Chakotay had delivered earlier in the day. _She's not you,_ the Captain repeated to herself. _She just looks like you. There is no other relation._ During the briefing, though, she found this mantra being continually challenged, not least because the moving mirror currently being held up to her showed more than just an echo of her own mannerisms. Aside from the tales of that other, even more beleaguered _Voyager_ , everything Kathryn said had been in Janeway's mind just seconds before that other her spoke the words. Her analyses, her thought processes, her conclusions, her questions - all of these were comparable. This led the Captain into more discomfort, because it begged other questions, ones that had nothing to do with the matter in hand and everything to do with something Janeway had no desire to address, even if her subconscious had other ideas.

Janeway was frustrated by her own inability to focus, not a problem with which she usually had to contend. Today, however, she continually found her gaze wandering to her left, where Chakotay sat, paying his usual close attention. What did he think about this situation? What had his initial reaction been? The shock of his announcement had been so great that she barely remembered her own external behaviour in that moment. She'd been too busy trying to grasp the magnitude of what he'd told her, of the idea that in another life, the two of them had been that intimately connected.

 _How had it happened?_ she asked herself. _Is this me so entirely different that she could so completely disregard the basic rules I have set myself? What gave her the right to throw herself into a relationship - more than that, a marriage - with one of her crew?_

These questions alone underlined Janeway's previous silent statement to herself: This woman was not her, could not be her, if she could find something more important than the delivery of her crew back to their home system to occupy her during her _Voyager_ 's journey. Moreover, concentrating on those differences, the surface questions that bore a bitter tinge, blocked out the others that were clamouring in her mind, questions she had no intention of asking or allowing herself to dwell upon.

 _How? When? How had it begun? How had it worked?_

 _What was it like, to-?_

She wouldn't even allow herself to think that one. Annoyance, anger even, replaced the space left by the end of that sentence. Anger at this other her, who seemed, from the way she addressed the crew and her general demeanour, to be entirely oblivious to Janeway's discomfort. Or perhaps she simply did not care. After all, it would take an extraordinary level of selfishness, Janeway thought, to allow the level of personal distraction that must have precipitated that marriage.

At this last thought she glanced towards Chakotay again and then cursed herself.

 _She's not you. Her husband was not him_.

The briefing came to an end. The crew's curiosity about the state of the other Voyager notwithstanding, it had yielded no additional information that could help them place Kathryn back where she belonged. Their best bet, it seemed, was to chase down this energy ribbon of unidentified origin, the wake of which they were already following. It was moving away from them at high warp and Janeway wasn't keen on the detour from their course when they had so little information to go on, but to date it was their only lead.

"Dismissed," she said, crisply, and stood to watch the senior staff file out, casting glances at Kathryn they went. Kathryn smiled at each of them, and once or twice opened her mouth as if wanting to say something, but each time she reigned herself in.

At length it was only Chakotay, Kathryn and Janeway left in the room.

"Perhaps it would be best if you went down to Astrometrics," Janeway suggested to Kathryn, not quite looking her in the eye. "Work with Seven, see what else you can come up with about this energy ribbon."

"Of course, Captain," said her voice back to her. "But perhaps first, we should talk. I think you may have some questions for me. And I confess that I have some for you."

Janeway lifted her jaw. The two women looked at each other. Chakotay stood on the periphery between them. He looked from one to the other.

"Questions pertaining to our situation?" Janeway asked. "To returning you to your own version of Voyager? Because to my mind, that's what's most important at this juncture."

Kathryn smiled slightly, a gesture that caught Janeway off balance, because it held within it a sense of studied patience edged with distinct impatience. "Of course, Captain."

"Very well. Chakotay, you have the bridge."

"Aye, Captain."

Kathryn's eyes followed him as he left, and remained on the door for a moment once it had hushed shut behind him. Then she turned back to Janeway. The smile had cooled. She watched the Captain with eyes that held entirely too much knowledge to be comfortable.

 _She isn't you. She isn't._

"So," Kathryn said. "Ask me."

Janeway baulked. "Ask you what? I believe we covered everything relevant in the briefing."

Kathryn shook her head. "Ignoring it won't make it go away, Captain, and let's not forget - I know you in a way no one else ever has or ever will."

"You are not me. Demonstrably so."

"I am enough of you to know exactly what was going through your head during that briefing, and although there was a fair portion of that analytical mind of yours trying to work out how this happened and what this is, there was an entirely different part trying to work out how something else happened. That, at least, is something I can give you an easy answer to and we both know that out here, easy answers are rare and valuable. So ask me, Captain. Just ask me."

Janeway sucked in a breath. "I told you the only important question at the moment is how to get you back to your own ship. Anything else is irrelevant. Especially whatever desperate excuse you might come up with to justify a Starfleet captain's dereliction of duty."

Kathryn stared at her for a moment. Then she rested a hand on the back of one of the chairs and looked out towards the stars. "A dereliction of duty," she repeated, quietly. Janeway could see her eyes roving from star to moving star. "Yes, I remember thinking of it that way, too."

"Well, that's a relief, at least," Janeway said dryly. "To know that you are not so completely removed from propriety."

Kathryn looked back at her, a solemn look on her face. "Do you remember being anything other than duty?" she asked. "Do you remember being Kathryn Janeway at all?"

"I am Kathryn Janeway, and I am as I have always been."

"No," Kathryn said, her voice a little stronger now. "You are Captain Janeway. The Kathryn part of you got lost a long time ago."

Janeway shifted, frowning, her impatience growing. "I don't have time for this meandering conversation," she said, shortly. "I believe we both have better things we could be doing."

Kathryn's lips quirked in a smile as she lifted one eyebrow: she was obviously no more accustomed to being dismissed than the Captain would have been herself.

"We've met before," she said then. "Don't you remember? The dream you had, the night before Justin asked you to marry him?"

Janeway opened her mouth to say something, but sound failed her. She stared at the woman opposite, at herself, a memory resurfacing, stunning in its immediacy.

"I think that was me," Kathryn went on, quietly. "I don't know how. But I think now that it was real, and I think that it was me."

The Captain shut her mouth and turned her back, but the memory would not be suppressed. It rose out of the darkness of that past, shocking in its clarity, a riptide around her ankles, pulling her under.

"You nearly didn't go at all, do you remember?" Kathryn asked, her voice distant amid the clamouring past. "When he said he'd got the runabout and that he wanted to go camping on some desert moon. After all…"

 _...she hated camping and always had, but she loved Justin and knew now that she always would, and so that night they had pitched camp on the hot sand of the endless desert of a forgotten moon in the Tavod sector instead of beaming back to the runabout._

 _''No one has been here for millennia," Justin had told her, in a wondering whisper that summed up his whole being in a way that made her ache. "Can you even imagine that?"_

 _They held each other and shivered together in the heat and somewhere in the midst of that night she had fallen into a dream that felt more like a fever, and there she had been, waiting for herself. The dream had been so vivid, so lucid. They had stood in the desert and faced each other, looked each other up and down, two sides of a mirror. She could not remember, then or now, whether there had been words exchanged, and yet Kathryn had always had the sense that this other her, this dream her, was a version of herself she had not yet become, as if this was a glimpse of her future self who could hand her some sort of key to knowledge if only she knew the right question to ask. But that other her had turned away, and Kathryn had faded into another sleep: dreamless this time, feverless._

 _The next morning she had woken alone in the tent and stepped out to see a ridge of snow-capped mountains so far in the distance that they seemed only to be painted on: a backdrop made of myth. Justin was nowhere to be seen, but a table and chairs had materialised in front of the tent, where before there had been nothing but a vast emptiness that the human eye struggled to comprehend. Kathryn stood beside the empty table, drumming her neat nails in the silence of the place, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, the early sun already warm on her face as she quietly assessed her situation. She was not afraid. Justin would not leave her here. He would not leave her anywhere. A few moments later the silvery hush of a transporter beam brought him back to her. He held a pot of hot coffee in one hand and a diamond ring in the other, and at that moment it seemed to her that were they to find themselves stranded on that little moon, alone but together, it might be enough, yes, that might just be enough of a life for anyone._

 _But that happiness had not insulated them from heartbreak. Rather, the magnitude of her joy had merely intensified the shocking, sudden, senseless brutality of Justin's death, turning her heart into a ghost town in which she had been stranded, alone. For years afterwards, even once she had dragged herself from the immediate quagmire of despair that had swallowed her in the wake of the tragedy, Kathryn had felt herself to be hollow. She went through the motions of a fulfilled life to keep her mother and sister happy, to stop her instructors from querying her competency, all the while feeling as if she were faking something she had no notion of being able to perform in reality. Moving through the fleet's ranks had been all, and she had not known how or if or whether she would ever want to repopulate the empty confines inside herself, until she had met Mark, dear, sweet, loving, generous Mark. Yet she had been forced to leave him, too, though she would forever love him, carry him with her everywhere as she carried Justin. And then here, in this black hole of fear so far from anything and anyone known, when she had been more alone since any time from the point of Justin's death, there had, impossibly, incongruously, been C-_

She stopped herself, stopped the unspooling memory, stopped the stream of consciousness right there, right then.

Her counterpart still stood before her, watching with her head tilted very slightly to one side, as if she had been viewing some sort of slideshow: her life, passing before her eyes, perhaps, or at least something very like it.

"You remember," Kathryn Janeway said, softly. "I see that you do."

"And if I do? What does that prove? That we had the same dream? It doesn't make us the same. It doesn't make you me."

Kathryn lifted her chin and looked her square in the face, a window to another world she could not comprehend, nor look upon without recrimination. Janeway looked away, afraid of what she could not - would not - say.

"It doesn't prove anything," Kathryn agreed, "and there is no reason that we should expect it to. Except your mind went exactly where I knew it would, which should answer all the questions you can possibly think to ask. Love never made either of us weak, Captain. It made us more than ourselves, always. Being alone, out here - there is nothing more weakening than that. Waking up beside Chakotay, on all the days we were allowed each other - it made me stronger than I would have been without him. It made me - he made me - a better Captain for our crew, every day that I let us be all that we could be. Six months gone, and he still does. He always will."

Janeway made a sound in her throat, unexpected even to her. "I don't know why you're telling me this," she said, her voice hoarse even beyond its usual timbre.

Kathryn smiled slightly, glancing once more towards the stars. "Because second chances come so rarely, Captain. Something else that Chakotay made me understand." She turned towards the door. "I'll be in Astrometrics if you need me."

[TBC]


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** I am still struggling to find time and brain space to continue this, sorry! Many thanks to MissyHissy3 for her beta read.

* * *

 **Seven**

They chased the ribbon across the stars, but it continued to outrun them. Chakotay woke each morning after that first day and looked out of his quarters at the expanse, always hoping to see that strange burning light ghosting ahead of them. His hopes were never fulfilled. He'd go up to the bridge, check in with helm and the sensor array, each time wondering if perhaps it had vanished as he slept, but it never had. It simply stayed ahead of them, warping at a speed that eluded _Voyager_ 's tired core.

He watched Kathryn fret, blue eyes grey with worry, growing paler by the day. He watched the Captain set her jaw, her face carved out of cold marble as if couching herself in stone could halt something - what, he couldn't guess - in its tracks. After that day he had left them to speak alone he rarely saw them together, except for the daily briefings that persisted to remind them all of their failure to rectify this problem.

Chakotay kept a close eye and ear on the crew. Aside from the inevitable flurry of discussion when Kathryn first arrived, they seemed to have settled into this new strangeness with the aplomb of travellers that have seen too much to be shocked by anything, however strange. As for Chakotay himself, he had brokered an uneasy truce with his own mind. For those first few nights he had lain awake and the questions had circled him like the winds of a tornado. Giving up on sleep he had meditated instead, and realised that the answer was that there were no answers. He could not pass this by in peace because there was, simply, no way to do so. The only solution was to accept the turmoil, to wash with it instead of trying to navigate its uneven tides. Accepting the insanity of the situation helped a little. At least, it did when he was alone, without her. With her, the confusion was still absolute, and the only recourse he had was to conceal as much as he could.

He worried about her, though: he worried about _them_ , though the Captain seemed more distant now than ever. He tried, once or twice, to tell her that he was available should she need to talk, but she turned away, dismissing him with an indifferent shoulder. He dared not offer Kathryn the same. He felt her eyes on him when she thought he was not aware of her, not realising that the truth was he was forever aware of her. She never tried to increase their intimacy, never tried to shorten the distance between them, but he felt it, the pull of the grief she had let out before him once and had kept in check ever since.

That she was grieving _him_ … He tried to let that wash away from him in the tide he could not navigate. The human brain was not made to swallow such conundrums. His knowledge of this allowed him to view the Captain's deliberate isolation with a sympathy with which he might otherwise have replaced with impatience.

The turning point came four weeks after Kathryn had first arrived, via the unsubtle (was he ever anything else?) ministrations of Tom Paris. The lieutenant arrived in Chakotay's office one morning with an invitation.

"We – some of the crew – are holding a little get together," he said, by way of explanation. "Nothing too fancy. It's just been a strange few weeks, and we thought a chance to let our hair down might be a good thing."

Chakotay looked up at him with a steady eye. "'Some of us'?" he asked, dubiously. "'We'?"

"Okay," Tom admitted. "It was mainly my idea. But it's a good one, isn't it? You can't pretend it hasn't been the strangest thing we've encountered so far, having two Kathryn Janeways walking the halls of _Voyager_."

Chakotay kept his face impassive, but no, there was no way in heaven or on earth that he could pretend that it was anything other than monumentally strange. He wondered if the turmoil it had caused in his own mind could be blamed for him missing what Tom had said – that everyone else was 'on edge'. Were they? If so, had he failed them because of what this had done to him? Surely he was a better first officer than that? He'd have to work harder, he thought to himself.

"What did you have in mind? And it's not like you to ask my permission. It's not as if you need to - I assume you've already persuaded Harry and B'Elanna to pool their holodeck privileges to provide the time?"

Tom ignored that and instead said, "Well, we were wondering whether to invite Kathryn. It seems as if she hasn't stopped for a moment since she got here."

Chakotay looked down at his desk. "She's desperate to get back home. To _her_ ship. To _her_ crew."

"I know that, but still," said Tom, "don't you think she needs a bit of R&R? I get the impression that if – _when_ – she gets back to her _Voyager_ , it won't be a place where she can kick back in a holodeck for an hour or two."

That stray 'if' reverberated in Chakotay's mind. _If_ she got back. And what if she didn't? He cleared his throat, pushing the thought away.

"It's a good idea, Tom, and I'm sure you're right."

Paris smiled. "Great. So you'll invite her?"

Chakotay frowned. "Me?"

Tom shrugged. "You've spent more time with her than any of us, except maybe Seven, and I can't see that working out well, can you? We'll probably have enough trouble persuading Seven to come. If we ask her to invite Kathryn they'll both just end up pulling a double shift and forget to even eat."

Chakotay let the following pause hang as he tried to find an excuse that would preclude the possibility of his being able to ask Kathryn Janeway to the holodeck for a night of entertainment. Apart from anything else him asking her meant he wouldn't be able to find an excuse not to attend himself.

"All right," he said, eventually. "What am I to tell her?"

Paris grinned. "2100 hours, holodeck two, after alpha shift on Friday. It's a hoedown so dress accordingly and be prepared to donate some replicator rations. That's it."

"A 'hoedown'?"

Paris was already beating a fast retreat. "You'll love it. It's right up your street. Trust me."

The door shut behind him before Chakotay could think of an appropriate response. He sat down at his desk and spoke into the air.

"Computer, define 'Hoedown'."

* * *

"I should be looking at the latest sensor readings," Kathryn said, as they walked towards holodeck two.

"They'll still be there in a couple of hours," Chakotay told her, mildly. "I think Paris is right – you could do with a break, even if it's a short one."

Kathryn laughed a little. "Bless Tom. I had forgotten how mischievous he can be. Seeing him again, the way he is here… it's almost a breath of fresh air, really."

Chakotay took in the smile that settled on her face. Kathryn had pinned her hair back from her face and now that he allowed himself to look at her for more than a second, he saw how well the last residual remnants of the burn she had arrived with were healing. She was wearing a dress with a V-neck and a skirt that fell to her calves. It was a soft green colour that brought out the copper tones of her hair. Chakotay also noted with some satisfaction that in the weeks she'd had access to a working replicator she had begun to fill out again and was looking healthier. If he'd had cause to lift her again now, it would no longer feel as if he was holding smoke. She was, for all the burden of her worries and the dark shadow of anxiety that still lurked around her eyes, beautiful. He looked away.

Chakotay couldn't remember the last time he had seen _Captain_ Janeway out of uniform. Seeing that face free of the constraints of the carapace that usually accompanied it made something in his heart tighten. But how could he have extended this invitation to the Captain this evening? Even if he had, Chakotay already knew what the answer would be.

He thought of her though, and wondered where she was. Still in the ready room, most likely, or else cloistered in her quarters, staring out at the stars that he suspected she both loved and hated in equal measure. It occurred to him to wonder whether this dichotomy extended to anything – any _one_ – else around her, but in that direction lay nothing but folly and so he steered himself away from that contemplation, too.

They entered the holodeck to find themselves at one end of a large, open-sided wooden barn. The rough floor was strewn with wisps of straw, and in one corner was a low stage, on which a group of musicians with guitars and fiddles were playing for the couples already dancing. Beyond the barn, a setting sun shone on rolling green hills that stretched into the distance, dotted with clusters of trees. It was warm, the air was fragrant, and it was a place and atmosphere so far removed from the rarefied air of _Voyager_ that it brought Chakotay up short.

"Oh," said Kathryn. "Oh, I had forgotten what it was like."

Chakotay looked down at her. Kathryn's expression was a mixture of happiness and tragedy that made his gut twist over on itself.

"Earth?" he asked. "Or the holodeck?"

She gave a slightly strangled laugh. "Both. We haven't had a working holodeck for years."

Tom Paris appeared through the crowd proffering two drinks, both of which he passed to Chakotay. "Kathryn, Commander! I'm so glad you came. Kathryn, will you dance?"

"Me?" she said, looking as surprised as Chakotay felt. "Oh no - I haven't danced for years."

Paris was holding out a hand. "All the more reason to start again now. Quick, before Chakotay has the chance to drink both of those himself."

Kathryn glanced at Chakotay, who smiled. "Go," he said, indicating the glasses in his hands. "I'll look after these."

She hesitated a second more, but Paris saw the waver in her resolve. Grasping her hand he pulled Kathryn towards the centre of the barn's floor. In a moment they were lost amid the happy fray of dancers.

Chakotay made his way to one of the trestle tables that had been set up along the outside edge of the barn, nodding and greeting crewmembers here and there as he went. He chose a table and set down the drinks Tom had given him, pausing to look out at the view of lush greenery outside their shelter before taking a seat. Tom had paused the sun in the act of setting, when the light was at its most golden and the landscape beneath was teetering between two states of being, caught for a moment as if in a sort of fairy tale dream of itself, which he supposed it was.

When he turned back he caught a glimpse of Kathryn and Tom. Kathryn was laughing as she spun on nimble feet, and he thought that if only for that one moment she could forget everything else enough to look that happy, he would have to thank Paris later.

"Cap," said a familiar voice. "Didn't expect to see you here."

Ayala sat down with him, bearing his own drink.

"Paris suggested I bring Kathryn."

Ayala looked around. "Is she here?"

Chakotay nodded towards the dance floor. "Tom got her to dance the moment we walked in."

Ayala looked over at the dancers and then gave a snort of laughter.

"What?"

His old friend turned back to his drink, raising his eyebrows at Chakotay. "He's always had a little thing for the Captain. Haven't you ever noticed?"

Chakotay blinked. "Paris?"

Ayala gave him a studied look. "Don't worry. He'd never do anything to hurt B'Elanna, we both know that. It makes you wonder though, doesn't it? Just how different life is aboard that other _Voyager_ of hers."

Chakotay felt himself wincing and glanced out at that eternally setting sun.

"Ahh," said Ayala. "Well, I guess maybe some of us don't have to wonder."

Chakotay looked back at him. "Sorry?"

Ayala shook his head. "I can still read you like a book, Cap, even after all these years. You know something you're not letting on."

Chakotay took a mouthful of his drink. It was some sort of ale, a bitter taste with a sweeter finish. "You're no more of a mind reader than you were when you were my second in command, Ayala. Stop fishing."

The music came to a finish and there was a storm of clapping from the floor as the dancers applauded each other. Chakotay looked over to see Kathryn making her way towards them, smiling, flush-cheeked, beautiful.

Ayala stood as she approached, offering his seat. "Ma'am."

"Kathryn, Mike, _Kathryn_. And I don't want to take your seat." She turned and pulled another towards them, sitting down between Chakotay and Ayala's vacated seat. "Please, sit. It's good to see you."

Ayala and Chakotay glanced at each other, her familiarity with the lieutenant a surprise to both of them. Chakotay couldn't remember ever seeing the Captain hold more than a few minutes' conversation with Ayala. It seemed as if this was something else that was different in Kathryn's reality.

Then it hit him. Mike Ayala was his best friend and had been for a long time. It stood to reason that his wife would know his best friend well, would be used to spending time with him, would be as happy in his company as Chakotay was. How many evenings had they spent together before that other Chakotay had died, the three of them, making the best of what _Voyager_ could offer, chatting and laughing, just three friends together? How many times must they have done that, before the violence of their lives had torn three into two? Nothing special, just the way their lives were, the way the friendship of two had easily expanded to encompass another that fit perfectly between them.

Kathryn, oblivious to his epiphany, had struck up a lively conversation with Ayala, who had overcome his initial surprise with ease. Chakotay was suddenly aware of how near she was sitting, her thigh brushing against his own. If he reached out he could put his arm around her and he knew instantly that if he did it would feel so natural to both of them that she wouldn't even acknowledge it. She'd just lean into him a little more, maybe, rest a hand on his thigh, perhaps. Because to her it would just be her husband showing affection, the way Chakotay knew he would at every appropriate opportunity if Kathryn Janeway were his wife. And to her, right now, right at this minute, she was.

He pushed his chair back so suddenly it made her jump. "Sorry," he said. "I'll be back in a moment. I just need to… I'll be back."

They both smiled up at him and resumed their conversation as he slipped away. Chakotay made his way out of the barn and stood, breathing in the pretend fresh air and trying to set his mind back on its normal axis.

"Commander?" It was Tom, appearing from the barn. "Everything okay?"

Chakotay forced a smile. "Absolutely. Just taking a moment to look at the view. I think this might be your best yet."

Paris looked out at the horizon. "Thanks. I like it a lot, too." Then he nodded back at the table where Ayala and Kathryn were sitting. "Kathryn seems to be relaxing a little. She should dance more."

"Well, ask her then," Chakotay suggested. "I'm sure she'd love to."

There was a pause, and Tom looked out at the horizon again. "No. Probably better not."

The briefly serious expression on Tom's face gave Chakotay yet another cause for surprise. It quickly disappeared, replaced by a familiar grin as Paris tipped the drink he held towards him. "You should, though. Dance with Kathryn, I mean."

"No," Chakotay said, and then added carefully, "Probably better not."

Tom met his eye for a second, and then nodded, lifting his drink to drain his glass in one go. Chakotay looked back towards the table where he'd left Ayala and Kathryn and saw the two of them making their way towards the dance floor together.

"Ayala. He's always got your back, eh?" Tom observed.

Chakotay smiled.

* * *

It was after 2300 hours when Chakotay and Kathryn left the holodeck. He hadn't intended to stay so long, but she was clearly enjoying herself and Chakotay hadn't wanted to break into that moment. He also hadn't wanted to leave without her, because after all they had arrived together and it somehow seemed wrong to depart separately. Kathryn dancing with Ayala had broken an invisible barrier between her and the crew, as if she really had finally become divided from the Captain in their minds. Kathryn had spent the rest of the evening dancing and chatting with different crewmembers. Chakotay had been happy to watch her be happy from a safe distance, while constantly quelling the desire to move closer. She had asked him to dance once but he had gently declined, blaming a twinge in his lower back that actually wasn't a lie. She'd taken the rejection in her stride and hadn't struggled to find an alternative dance partner, which hadn't surprised him in the slightest. She was luminous, this Kathryn, and she couldn't help but draw others to her. He stood on the edge of darkness, watching her incandescence, happy for her while finding himself grieving something that wasn't lost because it never had been.

They walked back to their deck, quietly chatting of this and that. Kathryn's mind was already turning back to possible solutions and theories that could help her situation, but at least her anxiety and despair seemed alleviated. There was a spark that had been absent before, or at least faded beyond recognition.

"Thank you, Chakotay," she said. "I didn't expect to enjoy myself as much as I did. Thank you for asking me."

He smiled. "I'm glad we went. It was good to see you relax. And I never knew you were such a good dancer."

She laughed, the sound blooming in the corridor like a flower. "I'd forgotten I ever knew."

They reached her door and she opened it and walked straight in. Chakotay stopped on the threshold and it took a second before Kathryn realised he hadn't followed. She turned, and the happiness in her expression faltered. Chakotay realised with a sharp lance through his heart that she had momentarily forgotten that it wasn't her husband behind her, that he could not follow her through those doors as if he belonged there, because despite all evidence to the contrary, he did not.

She swallowed, dropping her head for a moment, and when she looked up again he saw the sheen in her eyes.

"Well," she said. "Goodnight. I'll see you in the morning."

He smiled, aware that despite his best intentions, it was a sad expression. "Goodnight, Kathryn."

He took a step back and the door closed. He remained there for a moment, staring at her door, overcome by a yearning so powerful that for an instant he could barely draw breath.

Chakotay heard a sound from further down the corridor. He turned and saw the Captain, still in uniform, standing at the open door of her quarters. She stared at him for a moment before turning away. The door sealed behind her.

He was left alone.

[TBC]


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** Trying my best to get this finished asap. Thank you to everyone who's left a review, it really means a lot! Big thanks to MissyHissy3 for her excellent betaing skills.

* * *

 **Eight**

Janeway let the door slide shut behind her. For a second she stood absolutely still just inside her quarters, as if she had been turned to stone. Then she walked to the centre of her small private space and stopped again, turning on the spot, adrift, anchorless with nowhere to go.

She was still in her uniform – there had been reports that required her attention before she could leave the ready room without guilt – and suddenly the uniform seemed too heavy for her tired shoulders. She reached up to undo the fastening of her jacket and realised that her fingers had begun to shake. She pulled on the zipper anyway, untangled herself from the shackles in which she spent almost all her waking hours, but even once she stood only in her regulation grey tank top, she could not stop her fingers shaking.

What had she just seen?

She asked herself the question, but in reality she already knew. She knew because it wasn't just that she could read the look on her counterpart's face. She could also read the emotions in that softened stance. Attraction, longing, disappointment: they were all there, directed straight at Chakotay in a way Janeway hoped she'd always managed to hide but that Kathryn seemed to think it unnecessary to reign in at all. And Chakotay…

He hadn't gone inside. Not that Kathryn had asked him to, but Janeway knew without a doubt that if her first officer had stepped over that threshold the other her wouldn't have stopped him. No, he hadn't gone inside. But he'd stood looking at that closed door as if he'd wanted to. As if, given a second more without interruption, he might have changed his mind. Might have followed her anywhere she wanted him to go.

Janeway drew in a breath that was more like a sob and even though there was no one but her there to hear it, she couldn't bear what it signified. She yanked off her tank top and struggled out of her uniform pants, she dragged her hands through her hair and stood there in her underwear, shaking and shaking. The black despair she had been trying to keep at bay lurked in her peripheral vision, close enough that if she turned to look at it, it could overtake her.

 _A second chance._ That's what Kathryn had said. Through some strange twist in the space-time continuum she had found herself with a second chance to regain the husband she had lost, the husband she had _loved._ At first Janeway hadn't wanted to believe that there was a version of herself capable of doing what she suspected Kathryn had meant with those words, but now there seemed no doubt. She wanted Chakotay to fall in love with her the way her husband had. And to what end other than to have him return with her to her reality when _Voyager_ finally managed to return her to her rightful place?

Janeway pressed her fingers to her lips and looked out into the stars. Would _Voyager_ survive without its first officer? Could she still get the crew home without Chakotay by her side? If he came to her, asking for permission to go with Kathryn, could she morally refuse him the right to choose his own path? He wasn't Starfleet, and he could choose to remember that at any time he wanted. And if she did refuse such a request, where would that leave them?

The thought of losing Chakotay – of him actually being physically absent from her daily life – was not something she had ever allowed herself to contemplate. But now, the thought of getting up one morning and walking onto the bridge to see his chair, empty – or more likely with some other crewmember in it – crumpled Janeway's heart right there in her chest.

But what could she do? What choices did she have? To drag on her robe and go to his door now, and say – what? _Here I am, Chakotay. The scales have fallen from my eyes. Let's get on with it, before you decide you want the other me instead._ In what possible way could that ever be something she would or could or _should_ do, as the woman she was, let alone as his captain?

Janeway went to her bathroom and pulled on her robe. Her fingers finally seemed to be doing what she asked of them. She stared at herself in the mirror and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Perhaps this was always inevitable. Perhaps he always would have left her eventually, one way or the other. Janeway was aware that she had already left him. In her case she had seen no other option, no other way to survive this task of hers. In his case… well, why wait around indefinitely for someone who had deliberately made themselves unapproachable?

Her door chime sounded. For a split second Janeway continued to stare at her reflection, momentarily unsure if the sound was real. Then it came again. She walked out of the bathroom, heart beating a quickened rhythm.

"Come."

The door slid open to reveal Chakotay. They regarded each other for a moment and Janeway lifted her chin because otherwise she feared the thundering of her heart might force her to give herself away.

"May I come in, Captain?"

She didn't trust herself to speak, so she raised a brusque finger instead, bidding him in as she turned away, wishing to high heaven she hadn't removed her uniform. It was still draped untidily over the back of one of her chairs.

Finding her voice, she said, "It's late, Chakotay. What is it?"

The door slid shut behind him. When she was brave enough to turn around, Janeway found him standing with his hands clasped behind his back but a slight stoop in his broad shoulders. His face was shadowed and serious. Her stomach churned.

"I thought we should address what you just saw out there in the corridor. Or rather what you may think you saw."

Janeway put her hands on her hips. "Oh?"

Chakotay's expression cooled a little. He looked out at the expanse beyond her windows. "Why are you so determined to make this as hard as possible?"

Her heart plummeted into her toes. Was this it already? Was this him telling her he wasn't going to stay here, on _Voyager_? "Make _what_ as hard as possible?"

He put his hands on his hips and stared at her. "Are you serious? How about this entire situation? The one that you've spent the past four weeks trying to ignore, as if somehow you can just take one huge step back and pretend it doesn't exist at all." Chakotay dropped his hands to his sides, turning away and taking a step with a short laugh. "Although come to think of it, it makes perfect sense. It's the way you handle everything that has any hint of emotional resonance, isn't it? Take a step back. Bury it in duty. Pretend it's not there and soon enough it won't be."

Janeway flushed, first with shock and then with anger. "Commander, that's _enough_. I understand that this is a difficult situation, but frankly-"

"A difficult situation'?" Chakotay repeated, in a tone of utter disbelief.

"Perhaps it would be better to talk about this at another time," she suggested, trying to regain a modicum of equilibrium. "We're both tired. Emotions are running close to the surface. It's not the best time for a discussion."

"What if we can't get her back home?" Chakotay asked, ignoring her plea. "Have you thought about that? What happens then?"

"I'm not willing to contemplate failure."

Chakotay gave a brief and bitter laugh, rubbing one hand over his face. "Right. Of course."

There was a pause in which Janeway flushed cold and then hot, thinking of what she could say, couldn't say, should say, shouldn't say. Chakotay dropped his hand and looked at her, his eyes roving over her face as if searching for a truth she hadn't yet revealed to him. She thought about Kathryn, standing in that open doorway, looking up at him with an expression so open it made her flush anew to think of it. Without meaning to she felt her face change, soften, open, and so she took a breath and clenched her jaw and looked away.

She heard Chakotay let go a breath she hadn't realised he'd been holding.

"I know you want to believe she isn't you," he said, softly. "And I keep trying to tell myself the same thing. But the problem is, I know she is. Underneath it all, under all the duty and the responsibility and the simple rank _mess_ of everything we've become, what I saw tonight is you. The you I caught glimpses of years ago, when we first met. And I'd accepted that what we've become, this is just the way we are, you and I. This is just what this journey has done to us, the inevitable price of this sort of command. Unavoidable. Understandable. Get over it and move on. But I look at her, and I know that she's had a tougher time than we have, but she hasn't lost herself. And the only difference that I can see is that she let herself be with someone she loved, someone who loved her. And that was me. It was _me_. So do you _really_ understand how difficult this is for me? Because there's another you, not two doors away, who grieves herself to sleep every night because she's without another me. A version of me who was so like me that she sometimes forgets I'm not him. If I were to go to her door right now she wouldn't want me to leave until I had to report for duty tomorrow morning and the only reason I'm _not_ there is you, _Kathryn_ , and if that's not the definition of a particularly bitter irony then I don't know what is. So how about this: you try imagining that you want me the way she does, and that you don't care who knows it. Then maybe you'll have an inkling of just how _difficult_ this is for me."

Janeway couldn't breathe. She couldn't look at him. She turned away, trying to hold her shoulders steady, trying to find her voice.

"When we find a way to return Kathryn to her universe, will you go with her?"

There was a moment's silence. "I- _what_?"

She turned around to face him. "The first time I spoke to her, alone, she talked about second chances. How rare they are. How important. It's how she sees you, I can tell. And yes, _of course_ I know that you must be far more like her husband than you are unlike him. So how could she… How could she possibly survive losing you twice?"

Chakotay stared at her. For a second he looked utterly stunned. Then his expression resolved into a mask of angry outrage. "You think I would do that? To our crew? To _my_ crew? To you? Just… leave, after everything we've been through? Do you not know me at all? Have you not listened to a single word I've said? Do you just not-" he stopped midsentence, then abruptly turned and walked away.

"Chakotay-"

"Did it never once occur to you," he said, speaking over her, still angry, still walking away, "that the second chance she was talking about might not have been her own?"

"Chakotay, _WAIT_."

She said it with such authority, with such sudden fury, that despite the fact that he was mid-stride and almost at her door, he stopped. Chakotay swung around to face her, his jaw clamped shut.

A blaring siren wail burst over them, the light in her quarters turning a violent scarlet, pulsing, pulsing like the sick beat of a thwarted heart. A millisecond later the duty bridge officer's voice joined the cacophony.

" _All hands, red alert. Captain to the bridge."_

[TBC]


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:** Life just keeps getting busier and time just keeps getting shorter. Thank you to MissyHissy3, as always, for her beta read.

* * *

 **Nine**

When the red alert sounded, Kathryn was not in her assigned quarters. The evening of entertainment had unsettled her, not least because she had enjoyed it so much. Seeing her crew happy and relaxed, taking the time to enjoy each other's company… for a time she had allowed herself to forget that in actual fact, this was _not_ her crew. _Her_ crew were out there somewhere, still struggling for their very survival, without her, in a universe she should be searching for every minute of every shift. Instead she had been dancing with Tom Paris and chatting with Mike Ayala, enjoying herself. Having _fun_ , while they–

Guilt had snaked up and over her shoulders, threatening to choke her as she contemplated her selfishness. It was most sharply delineated by that final walk back to her quarters with Chakotay. For a moment, she had forgotten who he was, who he was not. It had taken that look on his face, that mixture of hesitation, anxiety and something else (…regret? Longing? _Don't think about it_. _It's not him. It's not_ ) to bring her back to herself.

She'd let the door shut, closing off his face to her. She'd listened to his footsteps pace away to his own quarters. Then, without even pausing to change back into her uniform, she had left again. After all, she had hours of work to make up. She couldn't afford to sleep now.

She had almost reached Astrometrics when the nausea hit. It gripped her low in the gut and she doubled over, retching dryly, bracing herself against the nearest bulkhead. Kathryn suddenly felt so weak she couldn't stand. She slumped to her knees, still retching. By the time a passing crewmember saw what was happening and came to help, she was blacking out, sinking into a void that swallowed her whole.

She came around in sickbay, the violent sounds and colours of the red alert splashing against the sterile walls. The Doctor looked down at her with a grave expression on his face.

"What's happening?" Kathryn asked, trying to sit up. The Doctor held her back.

"I am currently attempting to ascertain that. Please don't move."

"The red alert, Doctor. What's it for?"

"I have yet to be informed. Please, stay still." He took out a neural scanner and ran it across her forehead. "Have you experienced these symptoms before?"

She moved her head away, frowning at the cacophony. "The nausea, once or twice. I'm just tired, that's all. Overworked. It's nothing to worry about."

His mouth set in a grim line, which she took to mean that he did not agree. The sound of the alert was making her head ache.

"I really should-" she said, and then the siren stopped bellowing and the lighting returned to normal. The relief was acute.

"Well," said the Doctor, dryly, "since you remain my only patient, we'll have to assume that was a false alarm."

"I have to–" she made to move off the biobed, but once again the hologram held her back.

"I need to run some tests."

"Is that really necessary? I had a fainting fit. I'm tired, Doctor, that's all."

The Doctor put down the monitor and sighed. "I'm afraid it may be a little more than that. I need to run more tests to be sure, but I believe you are suffering from an as yet undetermined form of amyloidosis."

Kathryn swung her legs over the edge of the bed. "Which is what, exactly?"

"Collectively, it is a term for cellular disease at the cellular level, caused by a failure in proteostasis. In layman's terms, something has caused a disruption to the way your body is functioning at a minute – cellular – level."

She nodded. "A disruption?"

"Yes."

"Such as my body finding itself in a universe that is not its own. That kind of disruption?"

The Doctor paused. "It is entirely possible."

"Probable, I'd say."

"I need to run more tests to determine whether that is in fact the cause. But yes, it is probable that the cause lies with your displacement."

"I don't belong here, that's what you're saying. I don't belong here, and I've now been here for a prolonged period. And so my body is breaking down."

The Doctor looked uncomfortable at the simplicity of her explanation, but apparently couldn't argue with the basics of it. "I believe so. Slowly, perhaps, but inexorably."

"And what would be the solution to this problem?"

"As I said, I need to run more tests. We'll start with-"

"No." Kathryn jumped off the bed. Her legs seemed steady enough. Her head felt clear enough.

"No?"

"Doctor, even without further investigation, we both know that the way to halt whatever is happening to me is to return me to my own universe. I will not waste time sitting here when we already know that the solution lies elsewhere and I can be working on it myself."

"But–"

She held up a hand. "Please, Doctor. My mind is made up, and as my own body seems to be reminding us, I am not a member of this crew. You can't order me to stay. So I am going."

The hologram regarded her for another moment. "Very well."

Kathryn nodded. "I may not be a member of your crew, but I assume I can still trust you to maintain patient-Doctor confidentiality?"

"If you think it necessary. But I would recommend–"

"Thank you, Doctor." Halfway to the door, she turned back. "Doctor?"

"Yes?"

Kathryn paused. "Do you have any idea how long this disease will take before it… incapacitates me?"

He looked at her steadily. "No. Not without further tests to determine the rate of decay. It could be weeks or months. Years, even. Although since you have already begun feeling the effects, I would suspect the former rather than the latter."

Kathryn nodded. "I understand. And… thank you."

She was on her way back to her quarters to change into a uniform when Chakotay contacted her via the comm.

" _Can you come to Cargo Bay Two? There's something you need to see."_

* * *

"Where did it come from?"

"The rift we've been following. The phase signature matches that of a photon torpedo. When it appeared on sensors, that's what it registered as, hence the red alert."

Kathryn looked down at the pod. "The housing still looks like a Starfleet issue photon torpedo."

Chakotay nodded. "Yes, though it's been modified extensively. Scans show that it has been rendered inactive."

"There's nothing inside it," Janeway elaborated. "Whoever augmented this gutted it first before sending it through the rift."

" _Voyager_ ," Kathryn said, quietly.

"It seems likely," the Captain agreed.

Kathryn's heart swelled. They were looking for her.

"We're wondering if they are intending this for use as a lifeboat," Chakotay added.

"For me?"

"Yes," said Janeway. "The modifications include two layers of tritanium casing added to… well, I suppose you could call it the outer hull."

Kathryn nodded. "Sounds as if they were preparing for a bumpy ride."

"Perhaps to ensure the pod could travel safely through the rift to our universe," Chakotay suggested.

"Or… to aid travel back to theirs."

He smiled slightly. "Yes."

Kathryn found herself staring into his eyes. "I've been gone for weeks. How did they know this would find me?"

Chakotay held her gaze. "The crew of _Voyager_ never gives up. They learned that from their Captain."

Behind them, Janeway quietly cleared her throat. Kathryn blinked and turned back to the pod.

"There must be some sort of instructions somewhere," she said. "Some form of communication, about how to use this or what they're intending me to do with it. We need to open it."

They found it in the form of a PADD that had been hardwired against the wall of the inner chamber. It was Tom Paris's face that flashed onto the screen when activated – Paris as she knew him, with a scar that bisected one cheek and hair just a little too long to be regulation, stubble a little too pronounced to be just one shift's growth.

" _Captain_ ," said the recording, " _If you are seeing this, we are so glad to have found you_. _B'Elanna believes that we have modified this casing enough to get you back through the rift unharmed. Included on this PADD are instructions of how to generate enough power to breach the energy barrier, though you will need to locate an external source. We are attempting to hold position relative to its passage through space, although Voyager's core is struggling to hold warp 5. There is a homing beacon in the pod. Activate it once you are through the rift and we will find you. Hope to see you soon, Captain. Paris out."_

There were several seconds of silence once the messaged had shut off.

"All right." Kathryn rubbed a hand over her face. "It looks as if we've got my way home."

Chakotay stood looking down at the pod, his hands on his hips. "We need to test it first. We don't know what structural instabilities the pod sustained on its journey through the rift."

"Get B'Elanna to check over the calculations her counterpart has made regarding power generation," said Janeway. "Perhaps we can find a way to use a shuttle rather than this pod. It may be all they had to hand, but perhaps we're in a position to go one better." She turned to Kathryn. "If we can send you back with medical supplies and other essentials, so be it."

"Thank you, Captain."

Janeway nodded, then cast a glance at Chakotay before heading for the cargo bay doors. "I'll be on the bridge. Keep me updated."

"Aye, Captain."

Kathryn watched Chakotay watch her leave. Then he looked at her, smiling again, though the expression seemed a sad one.

"It seems that your _Voyager_ is one step ahead of us," he said, softly. "For all our full complement of crew and equipment."

Kathryn returned the smile. "Well, they do say that necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps having less to work with was the key." She looked down at the pod. "I'll be glad to go home."

"I can understand that."

She looked up to see that he had moved closer. Kathryn looked up into his face, and felt her heart constrict at the thought of no longer seeing it like this: alive, warm. Real. Her eyes filled with tears she had managed to keep in check since that first day.

"Can you?" she whispered, lifting one hand to touch Chakotay's tattoo. "Because they also say that home is where the heart is. And I can tell you now that it's not true. If it were, you would be there, not here. I don't know how I can survive losing you twice."

A frown flashed across Chakotay's face. For a moment he looked far away. "Kathryn said something similar. _My_ Kathryn, that is."

She felt the tears escape despite her smile, because he hadn't even realised what he'd said, or how. "Oh? What was it that your Kathryn said?"

"That she didn't know how you could possibly survive losing me twice."

Kathryn smiled again. "Perhaps there's hope for her yet."

Chakotay looked at her with serious eyes, and then reached out to gather her against him, wrapping his arms around her. "There's hope for all of us. There has to be, doesn't there? We live. We hope. What else is there?"

Kathryn said nothing. For a moment, she just let herself breathe him in.

[TBC]


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** Oh hai! Trust me, no one's more surprised than I am to find myself back here again. You can blame my husband suddenly insisting that we watch some _Voyager_. I'll be astonished if anyone actually remembers this story, but here we are… thank you to the very lovely MissyHissy3 for picking up as my beta over a year after I last sent her anything…

* * *

 **Ten**

Kathryn went to Engineering, eager to help B'Elanna check over the torpedo and her crew's plan for getting her home. Chakotay went back to his office, the better to start requisitioning relief supplies for that other, stricken _Voyager_. He tried not to think about the tremor deep in his belly, the one that, should he pay attention to it, he feared would tell him just how much he didn't want her to leave. But she couldn't stay. She didn't belong here. She didn't belong with him, despite how utterly right it had felt for him to reach out and pull her against him; despite how readily she had accepted the easy comfort of his embrace. He stood looking at the closed doors of the turbolift on his journey to the bridge, thinking again of how he had stood before the closed doors of her quarters the night before, the ones that had finally hidden that open expression of hers from his view.

The 'lift doors opened and the first person he saw was Janeway, bent over navigation as she discussed something with Tom Paris. She glanced up as he stepped onto the bridge, her eyes meeting his for no more than a split second before she looked away.

 _Will you go with her?_ The memory of her voice echoed in his mind.

The doors of his office slid shut behind him. He stood with his back to them for a moment, with his back to _her_.

Their truncated conversation had turned the fissure between them into a chasm. He shouldn't have said all that he had, but there had been a moment there, a split second, when Janeway's face had looked the same as Kathryn's just a few minutes before. When he'd thought he could read something soft in her eyes, the way he'd been able to years ago, before the interminable weight of this endless journey had compressed the open nature of her voluminous heart into a diamond impervious to his touch. He missed that connection they'd had, the sense that something was growing between them, unbidden but not unwanted. He missed _her_. He'd forgotten just how much until she'd been returned to him with a heart softened rather than hardened by the scar of losing him.

He went to his desk and sat down, pushing away thoughts of the personal in favour of the professional. Even if B'Elanna could work out how to send a shuttlecraft through the rift instead of just the pod, space for emergency supplies would still be limited. Perhaps they could spare a replicator along with the other equipment he had in mind.

Chakotay worked for three solid hours before realising that he needed a break and to eat something. He contemplated replicating soup, but his weekly rations were running low after his donation to Tom's hoe-down, and anyway, he should check in on Kathryn. He'd go to engineering, collect her, and they could eat lunch together in the mess hall. At least that way he could be sure she'd eaten something.

When he reached engineering, though, there was no sign of her.

"B'Elanna?" The chief engineer was frowning at a console, but looked up as he called her name. "Where's Kathryn?"

"She's gone to astrometrics, she wanted to check over something with Seven."

"Right," said Chakotay. "How's it going here?"

"It's early days," B'Elanna said. "There's a lot we need to get right in order for it to work."

Chakotay nodded. "I'll leave you to get on with it then."

"Hold on," she said, as he turned to leave. He watched as she glanced around them, making sure there was no one else within hearing. "How are you, Chakotay?"

"Me? Fine."

"Really?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

B'Elanna gave him a look. "You really need me to answer that?"

He ignored the look. "It's a strange situation for all of us. But one that will soon be resolved. I'm fine."

B'Elanna nodded. "I'm enjoying working with Kathryn. Not that I don't enjoy working with the Captain," she added. "There's just something… I don't know… more open about Kathryn. You must have noticed it too."

"Well, she's not having to play the Captain here," Chakotay pointed out. "I think it's easy to forget what a barrier that creates."

"Yeah, I guess," said B'Elanna, and then smiled. "Tom said she was the life and soul on the holodeck."

Chakotay smiled. "It was good to see her taking a breather. I don't think she'll get much R&R once she's back on her _Voyager_."

B'Elanna nodded again, looking away as she said, "Tom also said that she never strayed far from your side. No matter who she was dancing with or talking to, she always went back to you."

Chakotay took a breath. "B'Elanna-"

"The wedding ring, Chakotay," she said, before he could say anything else. "She's married to you, isn't she?. Her version of you, I mean."

For a second Chakotay could say nothing. "Did she-"

B'Elanna shook her head. "No. No one's said a thing about it at all. I just…" she shrugged, "Put two and two together. After what Tom said, and… knowing you, I suppose. And the last few hours, working with her, seeing how she is. I'm right. Aren't I?"

Chakotay looked away, but said nothing for a moment. "He's dead," he said then. "Her Chakotay died six months ago."

B'Elanna drew in a breath.

"Don't talk about this with anyone," Chakotay warned her. "Not Tom. Not anyone."

"I won't. Does Captain Janeway know?"

"Yes."

B'Elanna gave him a hard look. "And you're still going to tell me you're all right?"

"The two Janeways aren't the same woman, B'Elanna, any more than her Chakotay and me were the same man. We're different people."

Torres gave a short, sudden laugh. "Of course you're not. Their timelines didn't diverge until six years ago. Until they ended up in the Delta Quadrant, just like us. He was still her First Officer, wasn't he? He still joined her crew, put himself – us – under her command. Maybe what happened to _Voyager_ was different, but the people aboard her – they're the same. In all the ways that count, anyway."

Chakotay stared at her, the sudden silence between them buzzing in his ears. There must have been a strange look on his face, because Torres winced.

"Look," she said. "I just wanted to say, if you need-"

An alarm sounded on the console in front of her. B'Elanna whipped her head around, the frown back on her face. She tapped a couple of buttons and swore under her breath.

"What is it?"

"A simulation I was running of the power required for the pod to cross the rift's event horizon. It's showing a massive cascade failure in-"

" _EMH to Commander Chakotay."_

"Go ahead," he said, tapping his combadge as the EMH's voice cut over B'Elanna's explanation.

" _Kathryn Janeway has collapsed. She has been beamed to sickbay."_

"What?" he said. "What happened?"

There was a pause. _"I've asked Captain Janeway to join us, Commander. Perhaps you could do the same."_

Chakotay looked at B'Elanna. "I'm on my way."

When he reached sickbay, Kathryn was lying unconscious on a biobed, her skin pale. Something about the sight flipped Chakotay's heart over in his chest – it wasn't the first time he had seen her thus, but in the month that she had been resident on this _Voyager_ , her hair had grown, her scars had healed and she'd regained a more healthy weight. She looked far more like his Kathryn Janeway now. And seeing her like this…

"Doctor," said the Captain's voice, as she came in the room behind him. "What's going on?"

The EMH's face remained grave. "According to Seven of Nine, Kathryn had been working with her for around 30 minutes, during which time Seven judged her to be showing increasing signs of fatigue. When Seven suggested she sit, Kathryn maintained she was well, but a few minutes later she lost consciousness."

"Well, what is it?" Janeway asked, going to the bed and looking down at herself. "What tests have you run?"

There was a pause. "I don't need to run any test, Captain. I know what it is. So does the patient."

Something about his words wound an icy band around Chakotay's chest. Janeway's face hardened slightly.

"You've been keeping something from me?" she asked.

The EMH looked uncomfortable. "Kathryn asked me not to divulge this information. I am bound by doctor-patient confidentiality."

The Captain crossed her arms. "Well, I'm ordering you to break that confidentiality, Doctor," she said. "I'll take full responsibility for whatever consequences there are to my decision."

The EMH glanced at Chakotay. All three of them knew that there would be no consequences. After all, this Kathryn Janeway did not actually exist in their universe, at least not in any legal sense of the word. There was no one to whom she could appeal with a complaint. The knowledge did not make Chakotay any less uncomfortable.

"Can you wake her, Doctor?" Chakotay asked. "Give her the option of telling us herself?"

Janeway looked at him, their gazes locking for a moment, before she gave a brief nod.

"She'll be weak, but yes, I can wake her," said the EMH. A moment later he had depressed a hypospray against the patient's neck.

Chakotay resisted the urge to step forward and take Kathryn's hand as she came around. She blinked, screwing her eyes up against the starkness of the sickbay lights, then looked around and levered herself up.

"What happened?"

"You passed out," said the EMH, running a tricorder across his patient and then pushing her back down with a serious look. "The Captain and Commander Chakotay want to know why."

Kathryn looked between the Captain and Chakotay. Her face was fatigued, her eyes clouded.

"All right," she said. "I suppose it doesn't matter now anyway."

Chakotay listened to the Doctor's explanation of Kathryn's condition with a growing sense of anxiety. According to the EMH, her recent collapse indicated that the rate of cellular decay was progressing at a swifter rate than he had originally anticipated.

"I'm going to get worse, quicker," Kathryn murmured, closing her eyes. "More tiredness, more disorientation, more fainting fits like this one. That's what you're saying?"

"Yes," said the Doctor. "There is little I can do about any of them aside from providing stimulants that will keep your body artificially awake, but that will be damaging." He looked between Chakotay and the Captain. "Her body is shutting down, little by little."

"So," Kathryn said, with a decisiveness Chakotay recognised, "all the more reason I get on with helping B'Elanna and Seven instead of lying here like an invalid." She swung her legs over the edge of the biobed and wavered a second before righting herself.

"You can't," Chakotay said, taking a step forward. "You need rest."

Kathryn made a dismissive sound in her throat. "I can rest once I'm back aboard my _Voyager_. Nothing but getting home is going to stop this cellular failure. I've got to get home, and as quickly as possible. Then this illness will no longer be a concern anyway."

Janeway looked at the EMH for confirmation. The hologram nodded. "She's right, Captain."

"All the more reason to make this a swift solution, then," said the Captain, softly.

Kathryn gave her a faint smile. "Aye, ma'am."

"We'll work round the clock to get you back there before you get much worse," Janeway promised. "In the meantime…" she looked at Chakotay, and he thought he detected a faint expression of pain darting through her eyes, though it was gone in a moment, "I know Commander Chakotay will look after your needs as best he can. I'll see what assistance I can give to B'Elanna."

"Thank you, Captain," said Kathryn.

The Captain nodded once and then turned to leave. As she reached the door, B'Elanna's voice burst over the ship's tannoy.

" _Captain Janeway, Commander Chakotay, Seven of Nine. Please report to engineering."_

[TBC]


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:** Thank you so much to everyone who left a review! I can't believe so many people are willing to pick this up again, as rusty as I am. huge thanks to MissyHissy3 for reigning in my most melodramatic tendencies on this one…

* * *

 **Eleven**

"We've got a serious problem," B'Elanna said, once Janeway, Chakotay and Seven were all assembled with her in engineering. "The other _Voyager_ 's plan – it isn't going to work."

Janeway looked at the console around which they were gathered. "You've been simulating the torpedo's passage through the rift?"

B'Elanna nodded. "I've run several, all with the same result." She toggled the screen and pointed at a read-out. "The energy that will be required to transmit the pod through the rift from our reality to theirs is huge. That's why, in their message, Tom Paris told us we'd need an independent source. I'm guessing they severely depleted their warp core to send the pod through to us. With the extra burden of a passenger, we're going to need significantly more energy. If we don't want to destroy our core, we'd have to find some other source. Something akin to the power contained in a supernova, or a blue giant."

"Then we need to be looking for such a celestial event here in our universe?" Chakotay asked, glancing at Seven. "And then work out a way to harness that energy?"

"That's not the issue," B'Elanna said. "The problem is what happens to that energy once it's passed through the rift into the other reality."

Janeway looked again at the conclusion of the simulation on B'Elanna's console. It showed a climactic explosion. "An uncontrolled discharge?"

"Yes, Captain. An extremely large one."

"But that didn't happen when the pod entered our reality, or when Kathryn first appeared on the bridge." Janeway pointed out, moving closer to the console and paging through the screens showing the development of B'Elanna's simulation. "The only thing our _Voyager_ registered was a slight jolt."

"That's true," agreed B'Elanna. "But certainly in Kathryn's case, her appearance here was an accidental transfer. To be honest, I still don't have an answer as to how she got here in one piece. I think there must have been some astronomical – literally, in fact – alignment that meant the two ships happened to be passing through the same coordinates at the exact time the rift intersected both realities. Who knows, if we spent decades studying this, perhaps we'd discover that the two versions of you were somehow drawn to each other, and it was just sheer luck that Kathryn came here instead of you being thrown through to them, Captain."

"Luck was not a factor," Seven said. "It is possible, however, that the weakened state of their _Voyager_ was an influence on Kathryn Janeway's passage through the rift."

"Right," said B'Elanna. "Which is where our problems begin and end. There is no way for us to recreate the circumstances that delivered Kathryn to our reality. The pod would be a good alternative, and as you said, its arrival here did not cause us problems. But with Kathryn's added mass, the energy required to push it through the rift in the other direction rises exponentially. There is no way to avoid a similarly exponential discharge of that energy once it's through the rift, and from what Kathryn's said about the state of their ship, it's unlikely it will survive the resulting blast. In the same situation, our _Voyager_ would sustain severe damage, and our shields are running at full capacity. Despite the shielding on the pod, it's only going to withstand the forces within the rift for a matter of minutes, and it definitely wouldn't survive the explosion. Their _Voyager_ would need to be near where it emerges to beam Kathryn aboard before it disintegrated or they'd lose her anyway."

Janeway felt an icy finger of disquiet probe at her heart. She said nothing, looking back through B'Elanna's findings, but it was all there for her to see, clear as day. There was no faulting the engineer's calculations. Everything B'Elanna had said was correct.

She was suddenly acutely aware of Chakotay, standing beside her. For a moment he was so still that he seemed to have turned to stone.

"What about _Voyager_ 's hull plating?" he suggested, then. His voice was entirely steady, but Janeway thought she could detect an undercurrent, something that swept deep. "Take a portion of that, use it to armour the pod. Would that shield it enough to stop it disintegrating? If so, their _Voyager_ could retreat to a safe distance until the explosion had passed."

"It won't work," Janeway said, quietly, before B'Elanna could answer. "As B'Elanna said, the power requirements are exponential according to the object's mass. The weight such armour would add - the resulting energy release would obliterate not just the pod but everything else within a parsec of the rift."

Silence reigned for a moment.

"There will be another way, Captain," B'Elanna said, into it. "We just have to find it. It'll just take time."

Janeway felt Chakotay behind her, holding himself still. She almost turned towards him but didn't need to see his eyes to know the depth of the expression she would find there. She stepped back from the console and turned her attention to B'Elanna.

"From now on, this is your top priority, Lieutenant," she said. "Take what extra crew you require – I need you to be working on this round the clock from now on. Seven, astrometrics will have to spare you until this is resolved. I have a few matters to attend to and then I will return to assist. Time is of the essence. Understood?"

"Aye, Captain."

Janeway cast a glance at Chakotay. "Commander. With me."

They rode the turbolift back to deck one in silence. Once inside her ready room, Janeway crossed to the replicator and ordered herself a coffee, calling up Chakotay's customary tea. She'd passed it to him before he spoke.

"We don't know the real extent of the damage their _Voyager_ has sustained," he said. "B'Elanna's projections of what the ship can withstand aren't based on precise calculations. There's a chance their shields are stronger than we think. That their _Voyager_ could survive the transfer."

Janeway turned her back on him to stare out at the twisting burn of the rift and sipped her coffee. "It doesn't matter. She won't even consider it."

"Because you wouldn't?"

She could feel his gaze on her face, and she looked down at the drink in her hand. "Because I wouldn't."

They were silent for a few minutes. "Well," he said, then. "At least you know now for sure that I won't be abandoning ship."

She felt the breath leave her lungs in a rush. "Oh, _Chakotay_ -"

"Kathryn is more like you than she is different, you just admitted that yourself," he said, quietly. "Regardless of what you think of me – can you really imagine that she would ever ask me to do such a thing? To leave my ship, my crew? For her?"

Janeway's heart clenched.

 _I'd want to. If it meant having you back from the dead? Oh, I'd want to._

Not that she could tell him that. Nor could she say, as he turned to leave, _Chakotay, it wasn't mistrust of you that made me ask. It was fear. Fear of myself. Fear of being without you._

"I'll take the bridge, Captain," he said, quietly, into her silence. "Please keep me apprised of progress."

"Chakotay," she said, turning to face him. He stopped. "We'll find a way. We will. Before…"

He looked at her from dark, dark eyes. Then he nodded once and turned away.

[TBC]


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:** Thanks, as always to MissyHissy3 for the beta.

* * *

 **Twelve**

Kathryn and the Doctor argued until he finally gave way and administered the shot of stimulant she wanted. It put a fizz into her blood, an artificial buzz like caffeine but stronger. The Doctor gave her a disapproving look as she pulled on her uniform jacket and made ready to leave sickbay.

"I know I can't rely on them forever, Doctor," she said, holding up one hand. "But you can't expect me to lie here doing nothing. Especially not when there's only one outcome to my predicament that will actually make a difference."

The Doctor's expression did not relent.

She left sickbay and headed for engineering, feeling the underlying drag of gathering sickness beneath her current burst of energy. Kathryn hated any kind of lethargy; could not bear to sit still while there was something that needed doing. She was depressed by the idea that from this point her energy levels would continue to drain away. That feeling would only be made worse by sitting still while others tried to solve her predicament.

When she entered engineering she saw the Captain and B'Elanna Torres studying something on a console, deep in conversation. Janeway looked up as she approached, the deep line of a frown etched between her eyes.

"Don't even think about sending me away," Kathryn told her. "I'll go mad if I have to spend another hour in sickbay and you know it. Better that I'm here, working with you."

She watched as the Captain shared a look with B'Elanna.

"Give us a few minutes, would you, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, Captain."

Kathryn watched as B'Elanna moved away.

"What is it?"

Janeway set her mouth in a thin line. "There's something you need to know."

Kathryn listened as her counterpart detailed the obstacles they had encountered to implementing her _Voyager_ 's plan. She felt the chemical buzz in her blood dim even as she considered the implications, but set her jaw against her body's reaction.

"So," she said, squaring her shoulders. "We need another solution."

"Our best people are at work on it." Janeway's gaze flickered away briefly. "Your input would be… invaluable. For as long as you're physically able to give it without compromising your health."

Kathryn blew out a breath, resting her hands on her hips. "I'm fine. Bring me up to speed."

Janeway motioned to B'Elanna. The engineer returned and together they filled Kathryn in on their progress – or rather, the lack thereof.

"Well," Kathryn said, drily, "at least I won't be twiddling my thumbs. Let's get on with it."

She saw a faint smile pass across Janeway's lips.

Minutes turned into hours, turned into days. They ran together, the passage of time marked only by the intermittent appearance of the Doctor to monitor Kathryn's vitals, Neelix to bring them food, and Chakotay. He would appear at the turning of each shift, and when he wasn't on duty he'd be there with them, refusing to take any sort of downtime until the situation had been resolved. Kathryn gave up telling him that he needed rest, because he would only leave when both Kathryn and the Captain agreed to do the same. And Kathryn had to keep working. She had to.

She was frequently frustrated by her fatigue. She'd often suffered exhaustion before in her life, and especially since the ship had arrived in the Delta Quadrant. This, however, was different, and soon even the stims were failing to help. She could feel herself fading away, her energy depleted not merely by the long hours spent staring at screens and batting theories back and forth with one or other of this _Voyager_ 's crew, but by the heavy drag of illness. She hated it, that she could not marshal her body to follow her commands. However illogical the notion, it felt like a lack of discipline on her part.

Perhaps it would have been easier to bear if there had been any sign that they were close to finding a solution, but they weren't. It didn't matter what they postulated, what simulations they ran, how far outside the box they all thought, there seemed to be no way to get her back to her own reality. The closest they came was the other _Voyager_ 's plan, and she would not countenance risking her ship and what remained of her crew just to save her own skin. It was simply out of the question. Chakotay attempted to raise it now and then, but she always shot him down. As far as she was concerned, the option did not exist.

It struck Kathryn as deeply ironic that even as her own situation worsened, her relationship with the other Kathryn Janeway improved. Forced to work together, at first their interactions had been stiff, uncomfortable. But over the long hours that they spent together, this slowly began to transform into something else. Not that Kathryn could ever see a time when they would be entirely at ease with each other – the situation was just too far beyond the realms of normality for that – but the thaw was palpable and, Kathryn sensed, welcome for both of them.

Five days in and now here they were, together. It was 0200 hours and engineering was quiet. Janeway had issued a flat order that B'Elanna Torres and Chakotay were to go back to their quarters and rest. Seven, too, was in need of regeneration. Neither the Captain herself nor Kathryn had taken any notice of the first officer's pleas that they do the same. They'd taken to resting in place, instead.

"I'm sorry," Kathryn said, as the fog of utter fatigue threatened to engulf her. "I need to take a break."

Janeway nodded, her own face pale and lined with exhaustion. "Take a seat. I'll replicate us something."

Kathryn turned to move away and felt her legs weaken. Her eyesight blurred and she reached out for something to grip to stop herself falling.

Janeway grabbed her arms, "You've worked too long," she said, as she lowered Kathryn to the floor. "You need proper rest. And the Doctor. I'll-"

"Don't," Kathryn said, grabbing Janeway's wrist as she reached for her combadge. "I just need a minute or two. Don't call the Doctor."

Janeway watched her in silence for a moment. Kathryn attempted to clear her vision. This wasn't just tiredness. There was pain, now, deep in her lower back. Her kidneys, perhaps. But she would not be confined to sickbay.

"Coffee would be good," she muttered, leaning back against the console and closing her eyes. "And I wouldn't say no to a brownie right now. Get one for yourself while you're at it."

There was a second of silence and then the sound of Janeway's boots moving away. Kathryn felt herself drifting, not into sleep but into some other, fugged state. Janeway returned a few minutes later and Kathryn roused herself as the other woman sank down beside her. Kathryn pulled a hypospray from her pocket and held it to her own neck with a wavering hand.

"What's that?" Janeway asked.

"What do you think?" She blinked, eyes finally clearing as the stimulant suffused her blood.

"The Doctor gave you a take away? Really?"

"I can be very persuasive when I want to be. Can't I?"

A moment of muted amusement passed between them. Janeway handed Kathryn her coffee and brownie and they sighed in unison as they both bit into the cake, then laughed a little at the shared sentiment. For a few minutes a companionable silence reigned between them as they consumed their caffeine and sugar.

"Remember that time we ate a whole batch of mom's brownies in one go?" Janeway said, a few minutes later. "She was so mad."

Kathryn laughed again. It was a memory she hadn't thought of in years. "It was her own fault. She shouldn't have left them to cool in full view, not in exam season."

Janeway shook her head. "Damn, I miss those brownies."

Kathryn smiled, though there was a sadness to it. "Me too." They both knew it wasn't the brownies they missed. "You will see her again. Mom, and Phoebe. Phoebe might have children of her own by now, do you ever think about that?"

Janeway nodded. "All the time," she said, softly. Then she looked at Kathryn with a slight frown. " _We'll_ see them again."

Kathryn looked away. The pain in her lower back had dulled, but she knew it would soon be back. "I'm not so sure about that."

Beside her Janeway shifted, agitated. "Don't say that. We'll find a way to send you back. If we can't, the Doctor will find a way to halt the cellular decay and you'll stay with us."

Kathryn studied her own face. "Kathryn-"

"No," Janeway said, cutting her off bluntly. "I won't accept failure. I won't be defeated. Neither should you."

Kathryn gave a faint smile. "Why do you have to see it as defeat? Why can't you see it as accepting what life has dealt us?"

Janeway stilled, staring into her coffee. "I remember those words. In very different circumstances, from very different lips."

Kathryn took a mouthful of her drink and swallowed before saying, "Good words. Then and now. I've thought about them a lot, over the years. I never knew Chakotay to say anything that did not bear listening to."

Janeway said nothing to that, and the silence stretched, the latent hum of engineering suffusing Kathryn with a strange kind of peace. She tipped her head back against the console and closed her eyes.

"How-" Janeway said, a few minutes later, her voice so quiet that it barely lifted above the ship's ambience. She stopped. "When-" she stopped again.

Kathryn opened her eyes and looked at Janeway's face. It was creased in a frown, her brows drawn together in consternation at herself.

"Kathryn," Kathryn said, softly. "Just ask me."

Janeway took a breath and exhaled shakily. "How?" she whispered, a few moments later. "How did you fall in love with him?"

Kathryn smiled. "So completely that I can't believe there was ever a time he wasn't one half of me. How did you?"

Janeway sucked in another breath and shook her head, apparently unable to speak.

"I don't think you asked the right question," Kathryn went on, her voice barely more than a murmur. "I think what you actually want to know is how we made it work. How we balanced the professional and personal, how we were both captain and first officer and wife and husband. And the answer to that is: perfectly. _Perfectly_."

She saw Janeway swallow and a single, sudden tear ran down her cheek. "No," she said. "That's not it, either. The real question is: how did you get past your own blockade?"

Kathryn put down her mug and twined her fingers together, thinking carefully.

"I stopped," she said, eventually. "I stopped pretending that I didn't love him, and I stopped telling myself that loving him was wrong. I stopped ignoring the knowledge that losing him would be devastating. I stopped turning away. I just stopped. I realised that sooner or later we were going to reach a crossroads, a flash point, and when we did there would be no more chances. And I made myself think about what it would do to me, when he was no longer there, in whatever form that absence might take. It was enough."

Janeway leaned back against the console, looking up into the dimmed light of engineering. "I think it's already too late for us."

"It isn't."

Janeway made a sound in her throat. "How do you know?"

"Because he's so careful around me. He always keeps his distance. In the moments where he could so easily take a step forward, he always takes a step back. And I know he's not doing it because he doesn't feel anything for me. He's doing it because he still feels so much for you. You are his Kathryn. He used those exact words, in fact, without even realising it."

Janeway's breath shuddered in her chest.

"I'm not going to tell you any more of the path that I travelled with my Chakotay," Kathryn went on. "I don't think sharing the detail would be either appropriate or helpful. We may be more alike than we are different, but we are still from separate universes. You are on your own path, with your own Chakotay. But what I will say is this: letting him in made me both a better person and a better captain. He balanced me, Kathryn. He made me whole, in a way I had not been since we entered the Delta Quadrant. Perhaps, if I'm truly honest with myself, even before."

Janeway wiped both hands over her face. "I just can't see how I could ever-"

Her words were cut off as _Voyager_ gave a sudden jolt. Janeway was on her feet in a second as Kathryn struggled to pull herself up.

"Captain to the bridge. Report!"

" _It's the rift, Captain,"_ said the duty officer. _"It's discharging huge amounts of energy."_

"Red alert. Get us out of range. I'm on my way-"

There was another jolt, so jarring that Kathryn was almost thrown off her feet as the two women began to run.

" _Captain,"_ came the bridge officer's voice _. "The rift… it's… it's gone."_

[TBC]


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:** Thanks, as always, to MissyHissy3 for her fabulous beta skills!

* * *

 **Thirteen**

Chakotay stood staring at the viewscreen, which showed a plethora of stars but no twisting cord of burning light. The ship's sensors confirmed what he could – or rather could not – see. The rift had vanished. He'd been asleep when the first jolt had hit _Voyager_. He'd jerked awake to see, through his windows, the phenomenon convulsing with even more power. By the time he'd reached the bridge, it had gone.

"Mr Kim, we need a series of long-range scans," Janeway ordered now. "See if it's reappeared somewhere else."

"Aye, Captain."

"I'll be in the ready room when you have the results." She looked at Kathryn and Chakotay. "With me."

Chakotay noted how stiffly Kathryn walked as they followed the Captain. Her eyes had regained some of the smudged shadow he'd been glad to see leave her face in her weeks aboard _Voyager_. She tried to hide her fatigue, but once inside the ready room he saw how gratefully she sank into the chair the Captain offered. She was clearly exhausted. The knowledge flooded his veins with anxiety.

"We need to locate where the rift will next appear," Janeway said, striding behind her desk and pulling her screen towards her.

"If it does reappear at all," Kathryn said, quietly.

Janeway glanced at her counterpart sharply. "Of course it will. Its appearance here can't be the only time it has ever existed."

Kathryn looked out at the blank starscape. "There are no reports in the Starfleet database of this phenomenon. Neelix has never heard of it. Neither has Seven. Perhaps… it was simply a fluke. A single occurrence, caused by unknown factors. It's possible."

"But unlikely," Janeway countered. "I told you earlier, I will not accept defeat."

"And I told you-"

The Captain held up a hand. "Don't. Just don't."

Chakotay looked from one woman to the other. He didn't know how, or why, but he sensed that something had changed between them since the last time he'd seen them together just a few hours previously. He had observed their relationship thawing substantially over the past few days, but this was something new, as if they had breached some significant barrier. He wondered what had caused the change.

"I'll tell Seven to report to astrometrics," he said. "It's possible that her research into the rift's movements may help predict where it will reappear."

"And what if it's on the other side of the quadrant?" Kathryn asked. "What if it's in hostile territory? What if it's ten thousand light years behind us on the route _Voyager_ has already taken? What then?"

The Captain gave Kathryn a hard look. "Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Until we know where it is, it's pointless to speculate."

"It's not," Kathryn said. "What will determine that it's too far away, too difficult to reach, that chasing it will take _Voyager_ too far off course?"

"What are you saying?" Chakotay asked.

Kathryn looked down at her hands. "That this ship has more important worries than returning me to my reality – something that we are learning may not be possible anyway. It was one thing while the rift was here. Chasing it across the universe for an indeterminate length of time, especially when there is no guarantee of success, is quite another. By looking for it you're simply making hard decisions for yourself." She looked at Janeway. "And you already have enough of those, Captain."

"Then what do you suggest?" Chakotay asked. "That you stay here, in this universe? That we put you in a stasis pod until the Doctor can find a way to halt your cellular decay?"

There was a brief silence. In it, Chakotay studied Kathryn's face and what he read there put dread into his heart.

"I don't think that's possible," she said, quietly. "And even if it was, I suspect that too much damage has already been done. That's another reason not to waste chasing the rift, Captain," Kathryn added. "Even if I can get through it in one piece, I'm no longer sure my body can recover from the damage it has already suffered."

Chakotay took an involuntary step towards Kathryn's chair and then dropped to a crouch beside it as Janeway stood, gripping the edge of her desk, hard.

"The Doctor should have put you in stasis the moment he determined your condition," Chakotay said.

Kathryn gave a faint smile. "Oh, he's been suggesting it, every time I've visited sickbay. I refused." She looked up at Janeway. "If I'd been in stasis and there had been a breakthrough that needed me to be able to leave immediately, reviving me would have taken time I might not have had. Besides, how could I just lie there while others worked on the problem without me?"

"Perfectly well, if it meant you surviving in a state that would allow us to return you to your own crew with a realistic chance of recovery," Janeway said.

"I thought I had time. The rate of decay has sped up, even in just the past few hours," Kathryn admitted. "Before, I was just tired. Now…"

"Now?" Chakotay prompted.

She looked at him, her blue eyes tracing the lines of his tattoo. He felt that just for a moment he could read her thoughts, and that she wanted to run her fingertips along the lines at his temple. She looked away.

"Now… there's pain."

"That's it," Janeway said, coming out from behind her desk and tapping her combadge. "Transporter room, lock on to Kathryn Janeway's combadge and beam her to sickbay. Janeway to the Doctor. You are about to receive a patient. Do not let her leave. Restrain her if you have to."

The look Kathryn gave Janeway as she dematerialised was one of resigned reproach. Chakotay stood. He looked down at the Captain, noting a depth of feeling in her eyes that he hadn't seen for a long time. She shook her head slightly, eyes widening.

"Please tell me _I'm_ not that stubborn."

"Well, on a scale of one to mule…"

She shuddered. "Don't."

He smiled.

It was an unexpected moment of levity, something that hadn't passed between them in a long time, and Chakotay saw that it had taken both of them by surprise.

"There has to be a way," she said. "Talk her into that stasis pod, Chakotay. It'll buy us some time."

* * *

"She's sedated," the Doctor told him bluntly, when Chakotay reached sickbay. "To be honest I don't know how she managed to stay on her feet for so long. Her kidneys are failing."

Chakotay's heart plummeted. "What's the treatment?"

The EMH sighed with clear irritability. "I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker. I've initiated haemodialysis but she's already showing signs of end stage renal disease. _Voyager_ simply does not have the facilities for me to develop replacement kidneys, let alone the other organs affected by the cellular decay. Even if it did, I doubt I'd have time to generate the required tissue. She's undergoing catastrophic organ failure and this is more than our medical equipment can handle. Although to be honest, I doubt any Starfleet doctor would be able to do anything to help her now."

Chakotay rubbed a hand across his face. "She told us you've been recommending stasis."

"She's been refusing that ever since I first suggested it."

"But it's an option?"

"I don't see that there's ever going to be a time when this ship will be capable of full-scale cellular reconstruction, which is what the patient needs."

"But there's always the possibility we could meet a race of beings with that technology through the course of our journey," Chakotay said, looking beyond the EMH to where Kathryn was lying on a biobed. "Failing that, she could remain in stasis until we return to the Alpha Quadrant."

The hologram was silent for a moment. "She is a woman so far out of place that the very cells that make up her body are rejecting their environment. Some might say that the limits of medical science have already been exceeded by her presence here."

"Some might," Chakotay agreed. "I am not one of them. Neither is the Captain."

"Perhaps not," said the Doctor, "and yes, it is true that she could remain in stasis until the medical science is available to reverse her condition – indefinitely, if that's what it took. The question is whether she would want to."

"If it was an option that meant finding a way to restore her to health, then why wouldn't she?"

The doctor shrugged. "In that case, how far would you take it? Only until _Voyager_ reaches home? What if there's still no solution? Would she remain in stasis then? If so, for how long? Just while the crew of _Voyager_ is alive? Or beyond? What if-."

Chakotay cut him off. "I get your point."

"I suspect that these are all factors that Kathryn Janeway has already considered herself," the doctor told him. "I also think it unlikely that her refusal to go into stasis is going to change."

A silence settled between them. Chakotay looked at Kathryn again, and could feel the doctor's eyes watching his face. He wondered what the hologram saw there, how his processors were labelling the emotional responses they detected.

"Can I talk to her?"

Kathryn came around slowly in response to the Doctor's hypospray. The EMH left the room as she blinked, her nose wrinkling as she frowned. Chakotay took her hand.

"Kathryn," he said, softly.

She opened unfocused eyes. "Chakotay?"

"I'm here."

Kathryn sighed and tried to sit up, but he pushed her back, gently. "Don't move."

"I'm fine."

In other circumstances, he might have laughed. Instead he brushed his fingers through the hair at her temple. "Kathryn, we need to put you in stasis, halt the progress of your illness before it gets any worse."

She shut her eyes and shook her head. "No."

"Look," Chakotay said. "I understand why you didn't accept stasis as an option before, when it seemed that getting you home was going to be in the short term. But now-."

Kathryn cut him off by opening her eyes and twisting her hand out of his grasp. She reached for his face, instead, cool fingers resting against his cheek as her thumb smoothed shakily over his bottom lip. Chakotay's heart stuttered: neither this Kathryn nor his had ever touched him like this – with such simple intimacy and frank affection. He'd wrapped his fingers around hers and kissed them before he'd even realised what he was doing. Kathryn smiled.

"I don't belong here," she said, softly but clearly. "This isn't my universe, Chakotay. When the rift was open, when there was a chance that I could get back to my crew, to my ship – that was different. How could I stop fighting, if only for them? But now… that chance has gone. I can't stay here. I don't _want_ to stay here, if I can't help to get them home." She rasped a strange little laugh. "None of me does, neither body nor mind. Let me go. Just – let me go."

"We can't do that," he said. "We can't just… let you die. And this… this isn't you speaking. It's the illness. The Kathryn Janeway I know would never accept defeat. Even while there was the smallest chance, she would keep fighting."

Kathryn smiled again. "I'm not accepting defeat, Chakotay. I'm accepting that this is the end of my path. Of this particular one, anyway. As for what my next one may be… who knows?"

Chakotay blinked in surprise. "I've never heard you express a belief in the afterlife before."

Kathryn raised her other arm, fingers reaching out to touch the lines of his forefathers. "There were many ways in which you taught me to be open. I wouldn't say I am a believer, even now. But I hope. Besides, you also showed me that there is grace in acceptance. Strength, even. Even if I were minded to ask you to put me into a stasis pod, Starfleet has never operated a policy of keeping terminally ill or fatally injured patients in stasis in the hope of some future cure, even on deep space missions. Why should there be an exception for me? This is my decision, Chakotay, and I am at peace with it. And if there turns out to be nothing beyond what we see around us, look where I am. Here, at the end, I am with you."

"It's not the end," he told her, his throat clenching painfully as he said the words. "Kathryn, it doesn't have to be the end."

She smiled, her eyes closing as she drifted into sleep. "No," she agreed, voice fading to a whisper. "It doesn't have to be for you. But I want it to be for me. Make your Kathryn understand, Chakotay. I know you can."

[TBC]


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N:** Thank you to MissyHissy3 and Mia Cooper for the signal boost of this story, it is much appreciated! As are reviews - thanks to everyone that's taken the time to leave one.

* * *

 **Fourteen**

"She wants us to just… give up?" Janeway stared at Chakotay, her hands on her hips. "And she thinks I will understand that?"

She watched as Chakotay looked out of the ready room window at the stars beyond. "Actually, she thinks I understand, and that I can make you see it from her point of view."

He was weary, she could see. Shadows had gathered beneath his dark eyes and his forehead was creased with a fatigued frown. She had a sudden image of him, leaving the other Kathryn's bedside in sickbay and making the journey here to her, a lone figure charged with a difficult task. Her first officer was caught in the middle of this predicament, both professionally and personally. He'd told her of the personal toll, hadn't he, in words so blunt and impassioned that she'd been left breathless. The memory of what he'd said the night that she had seen him at Kathryn's door had refused to leave her. _Perhaps now you'll have an inkling of just how difficult this is for me._

"I'm sorry, Chakotay," she said, quietly. "I know this isn't easy."

He turned towards her, clearly surprised, and a hard knot of guilt clenched in her gut. Had it really been so long since she'd reached out to him with words that framed anything other than orders and duty? She twined her fingers together, knowing the answer, hating it.

"I know _I_ am not easy," she added, and then, with a slight laugh, "In any universe, apparently."

He stayed silent, and after a moment she looked up to find him watching her. The warmth in his eyes took her by surprise, the spark of it igniting the memory of something between them that she had tried so hard to extinguish. She took a short breath.

"You're you," he said, as if that was all the explanation required.

Janeway swallowed and resorted, as she so often did, to coffee.

"And do you?" she asked, as she went to the replicator. "Understand her reasoning, that is."

There was a pause as he thought and she made drinks for them both. When she turned back Chakotay was looking out at the stars again, hands on his hips and a sad expression on his face.

"Yes," he said, quietly. "I do. That's not to say I am willing or will find it easy to accept her decision. But I do understand it. Actually, I think…"

He trailed off as Janeway passed him his tea and gestured for him to sit. "You think what?"

They sat side by side beneath the window. "I think that, in the same position, I would probably make the same decision. She's not giving up. She did what she could, when she could, for as long as she could. Now she is accepting what she can't change."

She sipped her coffee and watched him for a moment. "That does sound like something you would do."

He gave a little crooked smile, directed at his tea. "It sounds like something you would do, too, right up until that last part."

"Hmm," Janeway murmured. "It's almost as if someone was finally instrumental in helping her see her limitations."

Chakotay looked at her then, dark eyes tired but still full of life. She couldn't remember the last time she'd allowed herself to really look into them.

"Neither of you have limitations, Kathryn," he said, softly. "You both have grace and strength enough to fill two lifetimes, and probably beyond."

After a moment she forced herself to look away.

Later, she visited Kathryn in sickbay. The Doctor told her that he had ceased sedation at the patient's request, but Kathryn was drifting in and out of sleep. Janeway crossed to the biobed and looked down at the shadow of herself, a pale not-quite mirror image she recognised and yet also did not. After a moment she touched Kathryn's hand, and the other woman's eyes fluttered open. She smiled slightly and squeezed her fingers around Janeway's.

"You've spoken to Chakotay?"

"Yes."

"So you understand?"

"I'm not sure I'd go that far," she said, cautiously. "But let's just say he helped me to see another point of view."

Kathryn laughed at that, and the laugh turned into a wracking cough. Janeway helped her drink some water, an arm around her shoulders.

"I can't stop looking," Janeway warned her, once the fit had passed. "I'm not calling B'Elanna and Seven off the case. We'll keep trying until… until the end. But _Voyager_ will resume course for home."

Kathryn nodded, smiling gently. "Yes. I thought you'd say something of the kind."

It was Janeway's turn to laugh. "Of course you did."

They were companionably quiet for a few minutes, Kathryn looking down at their joined hands.

"Tell me honestly," she said, after a while. "Have you ever known a better man than Chakotay?"

Janeway sighed. "Kathryn-"

"Have you?"

"I've known – know – many good men. I was going to marry two of them. Remember?"

Kathryn smiled, though the expression was a little sad. "True." Then she laughed again. "If your Chakotay is anything like mine – and we both know he is – he will never ask you to marry him. You'll have to do that yourself."

"You asked him?"

"He was taking too long. And I'd made up my mind. What was the point in waiting? I knew he wasn't going to say no."

Janeway laughed, and then realised she was laughing at herself, which made her laugh even more.

"Good grief," she said, once she'd regained her equilibrium. "How on earth does the poor man put up with us?"

Kathryn squeezed her hand again. "He loves us. I don't know what we ever did to deserve it, but he does. That will never change, whatever happens. But he is also a man of acceptance, Kathryn, and once he accepts that you have shut the door between you, he will move on. Because he wants a full life, and he understands that to have one you have to play the cards you've been dealt instead of keeping them in your hand, just hoping that something will change. Otherwise a person gets stuck in one place forever. I know you wouldn't wish that for him. And I don't wish it for you."

Janeway's eyes filled with sudden tears, and impulsively she leaned down and kissed Kathryn's forehead. "I don't want you to go," she said. "I've just realised that having you here is like having a sister to talk to."

"You have a sister," Kathryn pointed out. "She's at home, waiting for you. So you'd better get on with making it back there. Because we both know Phoebe's going to want to know _everything_ about your journey when you do."


	15. Chapter 15

A/N: Apologies for the terrible typo in yesterday's chapter. That was totally my fault, fiddling around after MissyHissy3 had expertly beta'd it, trying to get it posted before I had to rush off and do the real life thing. Thanks so much for the reviews, you all make my day.

 **Fifteen**

Kathryn felt herself fading. She was never alone. She'd wake on her sickbay biobed to the quiet beep of the Doctor's endless machines and the familiar shape of someone beside her. Most regularly it was Chakotay or the Captain, but she had other visitors, too. Tom Paris brought down the Doctor's wrath for making her laugh too hard one too many times. Mike Ayala came by frequently at what Kathryn thought was probably the turning of his shifts, though her sense of time had waned to a blur. B'Elanna Torres, Tuvok, Neelix, Harry Kim – even Seven stopped by. And although they were not truly her crew, it was a balm to see them, to know that _Voyager_ was still continuing on her journey in some form. She had resolved to hope – to _believe_ – that the same was true of her own ship.

It was Chakotay, though, who was her most frequent visitor. She had tried to ask him when he found time to sleep, he spent so much time with her outside his shift hours. He'd ignored the question, and she did not have the energy to demand an answer. She was grateful for his presence, and she had to trust that his captain would neither allow him to neglect his vital duties aboard ship nor his own health in her favour. Sometimes they would talk, but more often he would read to her, his voice a low, soothing susurration amid the latent hum and overt beep of sickbay. He chose Dickens' _Bleak House_ , and as she drifted in and out, the descriptions of characters blended with her memories, until they were cast with an eccentric mix of faces she knew and the author's imagination. It was a pleasant accompaniment to the painkillers flooding her system, and yet something was missing. The lack haunted her but proved elusive. She could not name what she needed, could not fathom the shape of her want.

It eluded her until she woke to the noise of low voices and found, not Chakotay reading, but a murmuring huddle that comprised a triumvirate of the Captain, the Doctor and the first officer. She strained to listen for a moment, but their voices were too low and they had not seen that she was awake. There was no question of her being able to move unaided, and so she blinked until the blank ceiling of sickbay came into focus, and it was at that point that she realised what she had been missing.

"Chakotay," she said, her voice barely there and even hoarser than usual.

The murmuring stopped and three faces appeared above her, their expressions telling her everything she needed to know.

"Hi," Chakotay said softly, taking her hand. "We thought you were asleep."

She smiled. "Time's almost up. Isn't it?"

"We were just… discussing options," said Janeway.

"No," Kathryn said. "Enough, now. Please. Chakotay…"

He leaned closer. "I'm here."

"The stars," she said. "I want to see the stars."

She saw Chakotay look at Janeway and then the Doctor. There was a momentary pause, but no words were needed. The EMH nodded. Chakotay stepped back but kept a hold of Kathryn's fingers as the Doctor removed the equipment that had encased her since she'd been a permanent resident of sickbay. It was Janeway who stepped forward again once Kathryn was free. Her other self leaned over the bed, stroking hair away from Kathryn's temple.

"Are you sure?" The Captain asked, softly.

"Yes," Kathryn whispered. "It's time."

Janeway smiled, her eyes bright, and nodded. She moved aside and Chakotay let go of Kathryn's fingers, but only so he could lift her into his arms. The Doctor gave him a hypospray as Janeway took her hand again, the two women looking at each other for a serious moment. Then the Captain glanced up at Chakotay. Their gazes held. Then Janeway gave a small nod, and took a breath. She reached up and tapped Chakotay's combadge.

"Two to beam to Commander Chakotay's quarters."

Kathryn watched her other self as she dissolved in a fizz of blue particles. _There I am_ , she thought, even as her atoms spun apart and were turned into a stream that could pass through the universe unhindered. _What a strange and wonderful thing._

[TBC]


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N:** Thanks to MissyHissy3 for beta reading despite being on holibobs!

* * *

 **Sixteen**

Chakotay materialised in his quarters. He carried Kathryn to the sofa and set her down to rest against the cushions. She sighed slightly, looking up at the stars as he put down the hypospray.

"I've missed them," she said, her voice so quiet it was barely a whisper. "I hadn't realised just how much."

Chakotay smiled. "Are you in pain?"

"It's manageable at the moment."

He touched her hand. "I'll be right back."

He went into his bedroom and sat on the edge of his bed. For a moment he leaned his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together between his legs, head bowed. Then he took a breath. He pulled off his boots and socks so that he was barefoot, and removed his jacket. Then Chakotay picked up one of the soft patterned blankets from his bed and went back into his living area. Kathryn was still gazing up at the stars, and the sight made his chest tighten: how small she was against the vastness of the universe, how lost, how alone.

He shook out the blanket and covered her with it before going to the replicator to request a jug of water and two glasses. These he placed within arm's reach beside the hypospray, on a low table beside where she rested. Then he sat behind her on the sofa and pulled her carefully against him, so that she lay back on his chest, his legs framed around her. He rearranged the blanket over them both, his arms around her beneath it. They settled there, silent and warm, both of them looking out at an eternal emptiness that had somehow conspired to bring them together, not once, but twice.

They sat like that for a long time. Chakotay thought that she had drifted into sleep, so that the sound of her voice took him by surprise. After a moment he realised she was reciting a poem.

" _I loved you, so I drew these tides of_

 _men into my hands_

 _and wrote my will_

 _across the sky in stars_."

He smiled, lips against her hair. "That's beautiful. What is it?"

"The dedication that T.E Lawrence put into _Seven Pillars of Wisdom_ ," she said, voice barely there, but persistent. "I read it in the first year of our journey. It held a sort of resonance, at the time. And I thought that perhaps it would have useful advice for me."

"Oh?" Chakotay frowned. "How so?"

Kathryn shifted a little, warm against his chest, a comfortable weight, as if she had always fitted exactly where she was now.

"He crossed a desert so vast that everyone said it was impossible he'd survive the journey. To do it he united warring tribes. It seemed… an apposite analogy, at the time. Interminably florid language though, to tell you the truth. I wouldn't recommend it."

He laughed a little, feeling her small frame shake with it. Beneath the blanket her left hand gripped his, in what he recognised as a little paroxysm of grief. She slipped her fingers between his, and he felt the hard line of her wedding ring as she let out a breath.

"Oh, I've missed this," she whispered. "I've missed you. And I know you're not him, I know-"

Chakotay pressed his lips against her cheek, softly, just beside her ear, and whispered. "Ssh."

He lifted their joined hands out from beneath the blanket and stroked his thumb across her ring. Then he let her go, leaning back a little to find the trace of thin gold chain that hung around her neck. He undid the clasp, sliding off the ring that was threaded onto it. Chakotay pulled her back against his chest again, and held the plain gold band between his thumb and forefinger.

"I can imagine how he felt when he put this on," he said, quietly, lips against her cheek again. "How proud he would have been to call himself your husband, your partner in all things. I can imagine it because I know I would feel the same. I know because really, we _are_ the same person. And I think I will always love you, wherever you are in the universe. Whatever universe we happen to be in. Always."

He felt her tears as they ran down her cheek. Her fingers moved against his. She took the ring and slipped it on to his finger. Chakotay was surprised that it didn't feel stranger to have it there. He spread his hand against hers, the two rings beside each other.

Kathryn let out a long, shuddering breath. For an awful second he thought that here it was, the end, more suddenly than he had been expecting, though more peacefully than he had feared. But then she turned slightly in his arms, the better to cushion her head beneath his chin.

"I don't want her to be without you," she whispered. "I can't imagine how she has survived so long alone."

"She hasn't been alone, or without me," Chakotay told her, softly. "We've just been together in a different way. As for how she has survived – I think Kathryn Janeway can survive anything."

"All evidence to the contrary, Commander," she said, and then laughed at her gallows humour until her body was wracked with it.

He held her more tightly, and was flooded with grief. He struggled to control it, not wanting to let her see it, feel it. She sighed, and when she spoke next her voice was weaker still. He could feel her slipping away from him, from the world and everything in it, and hopelessly, he did not want her to go. He pressed his nose against her hair, breathed her in a way he never had before and never would again.

The hours passed, quietly. They talked a little. Kathryn asked for water, and then, eventually, for the painkiller the Doctor had loaded into the hypospray. Not long after that, she shifted against him again, and this time Chakotay had to bend his head to hear what she was saying.

"When times were at their worst aboard our _Voyager_ ," she whispered. "We would lie in bed before the day began, not unlike this, and Chakotay would tell me stories of his people. They helped me through every bad thing we encountered. Tell me a story, Chakotay. Please."

Chakotay swallowed his grief and looked up at the stars. He searched his memory for a story that would fit the moment, remembering evenings around a campfire with Kolopak on a planet so very, very far from where he was right then. He remembered the last story Kolopak had told him, and saw, finally, why the proper understanding of it had eluded him until now.

"In days past," he began, "there lived a great raven. It soared the skies on wings that spanned further than its father's, than its mother's, than any of its siblings', so that the valley in which it had been born could not contain it. It flew over woods and water, and it so loved the world that it could hardly bear to land. It watched the Earth from the air, until it held all of the world's secret places in its heart, pieced together in a map that it saw rounded into a globe. But it always shut its eyes to sleep when night began to fall, the better to be rested so that it could fly further the next day.

"One day the raven came across a beaver building a magnificent dam. It was so sturdy and strong that it had stopped an entire river from falling beyond it. The raven landed and the two creatures talked.

'What a magnificent creation,' the raven told the beaver. 'I have never before seen anything like it.'

'I thank you for your kindness,' said the beaver. 'It has taken me many days and nights to complete.'

'Nights,' the raven said. 'I do not know this word. What is its meaning?'

"The beaver shook its head, and pointed up into the blue sky. 'It is what comes after the sun has set, and if you have not seen it, you have deprived yourself of wonder.'

"Thus, that evening when the sun began to set, the raven resolved not to roost but instead to remain awake. It was rewarded with the moon and the stars, that gave off a light so unlike any other the raven had ever seen that it was awestruck. From that moment, though the raven loved the Earth, it loved the universe beyond even more, and longed to fly between the stars. On its great wings, the raven searched for a way to join the stars, but there was no escaping the gravity of Earth.

"The raven continued to fly over the Earth, loving the ground but seeking the stars. Many years passed, and on the raven's final evening, it came to settle again beside the river where the beaver had first told it of the night. The beaver's dam was still there, and the two old creatures sat side by side on the riverbank as the light faded from the sky.

'I never found my way to the stars,' the raven told the beaver. 'It is my one regret. I felt for sure that these great wings had been given to me for a purpose.'

'Ah, my friend,' said the beaver. 'But that was a lesson. For some things only come to us once we have reached beyond the hope of them.'

"The raven watched the stars until its eyes closed for a final time. When they did, the raven's spirit rose. It was the beaver that saw it, wisping from the raven's body, which was, after all, only its shape on Earth. It twisted and coiled, looped and danced, up and up, up and up, until it burst like starlight into the velvet of the night. The raven is still there now, among the stars, bright and shining every time night falls. From its vantage point the raven's spirit can see everything: the earth it loves, the stars it so desired. It is complete."

When Chakotay had finished speaking, he knew she was gone. Kathryn's weight against him had changed, and her hand had slipped from where it had rested against his. He looked up at the stars, eyes blurred with tears, and imagined her spirit among them, bright and eternal. He shifted, bearing her weight in his arms, and laid her among the cushions. Her face looked serene and beautiful, but the grief pounded into him like a sledgehammer. Here was Kathryn Janeway, dead. Lost to him forever, as elusive as the spirit of the raven that still drifted among the stars. Beside his grief bubbled despair, a great well of black that hovered around him. Chakotay drew the blanket over her, and then stood back for a moment, staring down at the woman he had lost.

He turned and left his quarters, almost too swiftly for the turbodoors to react. Barefoot he traversed the corridor to the Captain's quarters, the air chilling against his arms. He pressed the door comm. once, twice, the lack of immediate answer causing panic to rise in his heart.

When the door finally slid open Chakotay barely registered that Kathryn Janeway was dressed for bed. He crossed the threshold without asking permission, raising both his hands to cup her face between them. She looked up at him, blue eyes calm and alive. He dropped his hands and wrapped his arms around her instead, pulling her against him so firmly that he lifted her from the floor, holding her against his chest and hiding his face in her neck. He felt her arms wrap around him, too, banding strongly across his back, holding him tightly.

"It's all right," she murmured, into his ear. "I'm all right. I'm still here."

He held her like that for a long time. Eventually Chakotay set her back down on the floor.

"I'm sorry," he said, and felt, suddenly, as if every ounce of energy had drained from his body. "I'm sorry, I just needed-"

"I know."

Chakotay turned to leave, but she reached out and took his hand. He stopped, looking down at the tangle of their fingers, and realised he was still wearing the ring.

"I have to call the Doctor, I have to-"

"I can do that. Come." She led him to her bedroom. "Lie down. Sleep."

He didn't have the energy to question anything. His eyes were already closing as he laid his head against a pillow that smelled of her. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the beep of a combadge being pressed as she left the room again. Her low voice issuing orders lulled him over the threshold into sleep.

[TBC]


	17. Chapter 17

A/N: Thanks, as always, to MissyHissy3 for beta reading. Thanks to everyone still reading and especially to those who have left a review, they are very much appreciated! Very nearly finished...

* * *

 **Seventeen**

Janeway took her uniform into the bathroom and pulled it back on. She hadn't long decided to retire when Chakotay had appeared at her door. She'd stayed up, waiting for a call to tell her it was over, but had eventually decided that she needed sleep. Not that rest had been easy to find, despite how tired she'd been when she lay down. When the door chime roused her, she'd barely drifted off. She'd known who it was even before she'd opened the door, but that hadn't prepared her for the haggard look of grief-stricken exhaustion on his face, or for the strength of his embrace as he'd pulled her against him.

She'd felt that kind of grief herself, knew the shape of it, the wounds it left on entry, the way it never truly left. There was no way she could send him back to deal with the aftermath of Kathryn's passing.

The Doctor was already in Chakotay's quarters when Janeway got there. Kathryn lay on the sofa, eyes closed and face upturned towards the stars, wrapped in one of Chakotay's blankets. Janeway took in the water glasses and the hypospray, and could imagine the hours that had transpired before that other her had finally succumbed to the weight of her sickness.

 _Have you ever known a better man than Chakotay?_

"Doctor," Janeway greeted, briefly.

The Doctor closed the tricorder, having confirmed scientifically what was already empirically evident. "I'll have her body transported to sickbay, Captain."

Janeway nodded. "Give me a moment or two, would you?"

"Of course, Captain." He took a step back and disappeared, leaving her alone.

Janeway perched on the edge of the sofa and lifted Kathryn's left hand between both of her own. It was cooling rapidly, stiffening to the touch.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry that we failed to make you well, or to get you home. I'm so sorry that you couldn't rejoin your crew, your ship. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten, Kathryn. _I_ will not forget."

She looked down at the pale hand in hers. After a moment she rubbed the pad of her thumb across Kathryn's wedding band, watching it gleam in the muted light of Chakotay's quarters. Then she lay Kathryn's hand across the blanket and stood, watching as the prone figure vanished amid the transporter's blue haze.

Tuvok was the next on her contact list. They briefly discussed procedure, though firmer arrangements for a funeral could wait until their next shift. By the time Janeway returned to her quarters, fatigue was pressing on her heavily. She stepped inside her door and let it shut behind her, standing still and silent, listening. All was quiet, there was no sign of movement. She took a deep breath and walked into the bedroom.

Chakotay was asleep, curled on his side. She sat on the edge of the bed and ran her eyes over him, taking in the crease of a frown between his brows, the clench of his fists among her sheets, the companion gleam of the ring that wasn't his, and yet also was. It was his bare feet, though, that somehow conspired to make her heart clench hardest.

She swallowed and looked out at the stars. Then she stood and drew her quilt up to cover him where he lay. She took a blanket from the chair beside the bed and went back out into the living area, where she removed her boots and jacket. Then she settled on the sofa, pillowed a cushion beneath her cheek, and slept.

Next morning, she was woken by the unfamiliar sound of someone else in her quarters. Janeway jolted awake, disoriented for a second before she remembered where she had spent the night. She turned her head to see Chakotay leaving her bedroom. He stopped as their gazes met. For a moment they stared at each other.

"Captain," he said. "You shouldn't have let me throw you out of your own bunk."

She swung her feet to the floor and stood, smoothing back her hair. Chakotay's own was mussed in a way she'd never seen before, and found endearing in the extreme.

"You didn't," she said. "I ordered you into it." She didn't tell him about that split second when, looking down at him asleep in her bed, she had come very close to joining him there.

Chakotay nodded, looking down at his bare feet. "I'm sorry about last night. It was inappropriate for me to-"

"Chakotay," she cut him off, softly. "You have nothing to apologise for. On the contrary, I owe you thanks for doing what you did. For being there, until the end. It must have been very difficult."

He took a breath, still not looking at her. "It was the least I could do."

There was another moment of silence.

"Well," he said, half turning towards the door. "I should-"

"Stay," she said, quickly, and then as his glance flashed towards her, she clarified, "for breakfast. That's the least _I_ can do, Chakotay."

He smiled a little, and nodded. "All right."

They moved around each other easily as they prepared the meal, both barefoot, both still dispersing the last vestiges of sleep. The comfortable domesticity of it further loosened something within her that had been slowly beginning to unspool. She thought of how many times that other them must have done exactly this, started the day together in such a gentle, quiet way. She thought of what was to come that day, of what could be out there to upset _Voyager_ 's equilibrium at any moment in this unknown quadrant. How grounding these quiet moments must have been, this beginning of a day with another person who would be there to share the burden of whatever might come. She sighed into her coffee cup.

"Penny for them?" Chakotay asked, quietly.

Janeway looked into his dark eyes but couldn't find a way to answer. Then she dropped her gaze to where his left hand rested on the table. She reached out and traced the tip of her finger over the ring that he still wore.

Chakotay uttered a tiny curse. "I forgot I still had it on," he said. "I'm sorry, I-"

"Don't be. But I think… she would probably want to take it with her. I-" she bit her lip, cutting herself short. Then she sighed again. "I know I would."

Chakotay caught her fingers before she could retract them. They looked at each other across the breakfast table.

"We can keep telling ourselves that they weren't us," he said, quietly, after a moment. "But I think we both know it isn't true."

Her heart rate ticked up a notch, but she didn't look away. "Yes."

"Then perhaps we should do this more often."

She raised an eyebrow. "Breakfast?"

Chakotay smiled, gave a little laugh. "Maybe. Or we could at least start having our weekly dinners together again. I used to enjoy that. Didn't you?"

She tipped her head on one side. "Truthfully? Chakotay, they were the highlight of my week."

He nodded, as if that wasn't a surprise in the slightest. "Mine, too."

She sighed and gently pulled her hand away. "There's still a lot we need to work through," she said.

"Yes," he agreed, as he removed the ring. He put it on the table between them and traced its circle with his finger. "But…"

"But?"

He sat back, looking over her shoulder at the stars visible through the window. He frowned slightly, as if trying to frame his next words.

"Let's not pretend that we have all the time in the universe," he said, eventually. "I will always be here for you, Kathryn, no matter what. Watching a version of you die tore me in places I didn't know I had. But it also reminded me that life is short and it is so easy to let it pass by if you don't…"

He trailed off. Janeway finished his thought herself. "If you don't play the hand life deals you?"

He smiled slightly. "Something like that."

She nodded, twining her fingers together on her lap. There were things she could have confessed then that would have changed everything, immediately. But they were 30 minutes from starting a duty shift, and if this was ever going to work between them, _truly_ work, the ship and crew still had to come first.

 _How did you do it, Kathryn? How did you start, without letting everything else important slide? And then how did you go on, once you'd had him in your life, properly, wholly, and lost him?_ Tears pricked at her lashes at the thought that she could not ask.

"Thank you for breakfast, Kathryn," Chakotay said as he stood. "See you on the bridge?"

She got up, smiling away her tears. "Yes."

He looked at her for another moment, taking her in as if still reassuring himself that this Kathryn – _his_ Kathryn - was whole, alive. She was suffused with the same feeling of tenderness that had swept through her at the sight of his bare feet as he lay asleep in her bed. It was a feeling that reached beyond simple longing to an intimacy she could not remember feeling before, not with Mark, not even with Justin.

"Chakotay," she said, softly, "I don't know-" she stopped, unsure of quite what it was she had been going to say.

He came closer until they were only inches apart. Then he reached up and brushed away the tears she hadn't realised were on her cheeks.

"I don't know, either," he told her, quietly. "So how about we start again, at the beginning. We'll have dinner. We'll talk. We'll-"

 _I just stopped pretending I didn't love him._

Kathryn's voice echoed in her head so clearly that for a second it felt as if she was standing in the room. And there was another day on _Voyager_ waiting for them, in a quadrant where they knew nothing and by the end of it either or both of them could be dead.

"I love you," she said.

Chakotay stopped speaking, eyes widening with shock. He stared down at her.

"I just… think it would be a good idea to set the baseline," she added, her heart jumping unevenly. "Since 'going back to the beginning' doesn't really provide a truly quantifiable marker. And would be impossible anyway, since-"

"Kathryn," he whispered, moving closer still, "very soon I'm going to have to spend the rest of the day calling you Captain and pretending not to notice how well your uniform pants fit your behind, and I'm going to have to do that while working out how to conduct a funeral for a version of you who died in my arms last night, and you've just told me you love me, so excuse me if I just…"

He cut off whatever either of them might have said then by pulling her against him and kissing her with a tenderness that made her weep anew.

[TBC]


	18. Chapter 18

**Eighteen**

* * *

Chakotay stood beneath the light in his bathroom, regarding himself in the mirror. His alarm had woken him ten minutes before. He'd opened his eyes, slid out of his Starfleet bunk, stretched once and then dropped to the floor. It had been a while since he'd had a proper exercise routine – years, in fact – and getting back into a regular sequence was proving a challenge. He was not, as his body was gleefully finding many different ways of telling him, as young as he used to be. Still, despite the aches, he felt better for the effort. It wasn't that he was a vain man, but the evidence of a lack in self-discipline pained him, for it was indicative of other, less tangible deficiencies. But his arms and stomach were slowly regaining some of their definition. He was also more eager to begin his day and found himself less fatigued at the end of each shift.

Of course, it was possible that the latter had more to do with something else than his renewed interest in physical exercise.

Chakotay picked up his razor and caught himself smiling as he raised it to his chin. The eyes that looked back at him from his tiny excuse for a bathroom mirror crinkled in silent answering laughter. His combadge beeped.

" _Janeway to Chakotay."_

His smile broadened and he tapped his badge. "Good morning – I was just thinking about you."

There was a brief pause, and when her voice came again he could tell it was through a smile. _"Is that so? I'm scared to ask."_

"Only good things, I promise."

" _I'm glad to hear it. Breakfast?"_

"Sounds good. What can I bring?"

There was another pause. When she spoke next Kathryn's voice had a definite husk to it. _"You're more than enough."_

Chakotay couldn't help but laugh. "Good to know. I'll be there in a few minutes."

He finished shaving and splashed water on his face. He hesitated for a moment and then rubbed a tiny drop of cologne into his neck. The scent had been a birthday present from B'Elanna during the first year of their sojourn in the delta quadrant, something she'd found in an alien market they'd stopped at. Using it had been another habit he'd given up on years ago.

He leaned against the edge of the sink and looked at the man in the mirror. Not quite the young buck he'd been once, but still. Kathryn seemed to find something in his face to smile at whenever she looked at him, and to echo her words of a few minutes previously, that was more than enough.

They weren't leaping into anything. They were… testing the waters. A dinner here, a breakfast there. Time on the holodeck, sharing their favourite places, learning about each other. More laughter, more smiles, more teasing. More turning toward each other, instead of turning away.

It was good. Something in Chakotay's heart had eased, and he sensed the same for her. He loved the way Kathryn's eyes danced every time he went into the ready room, the sound of her over the comm. when one of them called just to hear the other's voice once their shifts were over, or before they had begun. He was pretty sure she had a tone that was just for him, and it lit something in him that burned in a particularly delicious way. One he'd be very happy to feel more of when the time was right.

It wouldn't always be this easy. It couldn't be. They both knew that. But it was a good place from which to start.

He straightened up and looked at his dress uniform hanging in the corner, and despite his overall happiness a pang of sadness suffused him. For all his recent thoughts of new beginnings, today held a definite ending.

"That uniform always did suit men better than women," Kathryn observed a little later, as he carried a bowl of fruit between her counter and the table. "I can't stand mine. I feel as if I'm wearing one of the terrible dropped-waist dresses my mother made me wear as a child."

He turned to look at her, deliberately running his eyes over her in an effort to make her blush. She didn't, though he could tell by the slight narrowing of her eyes that it was taking some of that iron will of hers to keep her cheeks from burning. He met her eye and quirked an eyebrow.

"Looks pretty good from where I'm standing."

"Flattery," she said, striding to the table with just a slight extra swing of her hips, "will get you nowhere."

He watched as Kathryn picked up the delta quadrant equivalent of a strawberry and slipped it between her lips, her answer to his mild challenge of a moment ago. He shook his head and grinned. Who was he kidding? She could run rings round him in any way she liked. He reached out and caught her hand, pulling her towards him slightly.

"Come here," he said, softly. "Just for a moment."

He cupped her face in his hands and felt hers rest at his hips. Aside from his shocked response to her declaration in the wake of Kathryn's death, they hadn't kissed again. On Chakotay's part he was a little afraid that once he started he would be unable to stop. He had visions of himself pulling her into a dark corner of the ready room or stopping the turbolift every time they were alone together. He had an idea the same might be the case for Kathryn, that they were both somewhat fearful that if they opened the floodgates it would take more than they each had in them to hold back the tide.

Now, though, he saw her warm gaze flicker to his lips. Chakotay lowered his lips to hers and felt her heart rate accelerate beneath his fingers, felt her tiny exhalation of breath. When he kissed her this time, it was with a smile.

Kathryn made a little sound that made that flame in him ignite, and when she parted her lips he ran his hands down her back to pull her against him. For a few minutes everything else was entirely forgotten. He would have happily turned those few minutes into the rest of the day, the rest of the year, the rest of his life.

"What _is_ that scent?" she whispered against his ear, and then shocked him somewhat by sucking his earlobe between her lips. If she wasn't careful she'd be finding out just how proficient he was at removing a dress uniform without creasing it. "Actually, I don't care. Just don't wear it on the bridge or we'll be in real trouble."

He laughed. "Noted."

She dropped back down from her tiptoes to look up at him. "Hmm. Why do I feel as if I've just given away important strategic information?"

He smoothed a strand of her hair back into place. "I promise never to use it inappropriately. Or at least, not when there are witnesses."

Kathryn carried on studying his face, apparently content in his arms, although there was a sad undertone to her gaze. "I keep wondering… about them. Don't you?"

He smiled. "A little."

"I keep thinking about the last time they saw each other," Kathryn whispered. "Did they know it was the last time? Or was it just a morning like this? Had they- Did they-"

"Kathryn," he hushed her. "The only thing that's important is that they had a chance to be happy. Together."

She nodded. "I know. It's just that today, of all days… I can't help thinking about her. About _them_."

Chakotay took her hand and raised it to his lips, kissing her knuckle. "I know. But here _we_ are. Having breakfast together. I have a feeling that would make them both happy, don't you? To know that, in some way, they're still here. Still together."

She looked up at him with solemn eyes, and then nodded with a smile. She pushed herself up on tiptoe again to kiss him, and something about her – Kathryn Janeway, Captain of _Voyager_ , defeater of the Borg, the strongest and most determined woman he'd ever met – standing on tiptoe in his arms was so endearing that he almost asked her to marry him there and then.

"Come on," he whispered. "It's time for breakfast. I want to watch you put another strawberry in your mouth."

They buried Kathryn Janeway amid the stars. Chakotay stood with the rest of the crew and watched as the torpedo bearing her body shot away from _Voyager_ in a streak of white-hot light. Its course had been set and would blaze a final journey directly into the sun of the system they were passing.

Beside him stood Kathryn Janeway, alive and well.

 _What a strange thing,_ he thought to himself. _What a strange and wonderful thing._

[TBC]


	19. Chapter 19

**Epilogue**

* * *

It took them weeks to stabilise the bridge enough to repressurise the space. The rift hadn't only ripped a hole between universes, it had also torn into _Voyager_ 's hull. Tuvok and Tom Paris organised work gangs to operate in zero-grav space suits and the crew worked around the clock. They had resigned themselves to the loss of their captain. They would not lose the ship too.

"What if she's still out there?" Tom whispered to B'Elanna, as they lay together, exhausted after yet another extended shift, another day on reduced power, reduced rations. "What if she's waiting for us to find her?"

"She wouldn't wait for anything, Tom, you know that," B'Elanna told him. "She'd be trying to get back to us. And she'd be expecting us to move on."

It was Tom who found the watch. It was battered and dented but still ticking, its chain broken. It had somehow snagged itself on the Captain's chair, so perhaps it had snapped as she'd lurched from it, trying to save what crew she could before she herself was lost. Tom held it up for Tuvok to see and the Vulcan had regarded it with his customary impassivity. He knew the story of how and when the first officer had presented it to his friend. He also knew the significance of the story behind the watch, both the original and the replica that Tom Paris now held up. Janeway had shown it to him when they had recovered Chakotay and Tom from the Krenim, having feared both of them dead. Tuvok had heard the tremble in her strong voice and had realised that her heart had reached breaking point.

Tuvok had had the sense that she had been asking his permission, though she hadn't needed it. He gave it anyway. It had been clear to him for years that Janeway had found more than a first officer when she'd taken the Maquis leader as her second.

He took the watch from Tom. He kept it safe as they patched their battered ship, as they had tried to find a way to bring the Captain back to them, as they had finally accepted that Kathryn Janeway was not coming home.

Before they set a new course of the alpha quadrant, Tuvok held a ceremony. He'd felt it important to provide an occasion that would both mark an acceptance and a new beginning. In it they fixed the pocketwatch beside _Voyager_ 's nameplate. It seemed to the new acting Captain that it provided a perfect reminder of how well two apparently disparate sides could come together to form a whole.

When the USS _Voyager_ set a new course for home, they did so in the spirit of their lost command team.

Determined.

Together.

[END]


End file.
